unword

Convert legacy Microsoft Word .doc files (OLE/CFB format) to Markdown. Inspired by antiword.

Extracts body text with heading levels, page breaks, and textbox contents. No external dependencies (no LibreOffice, no COM).

Installation

CLI (Rust)

cargo build --release

Python

Requires maturin and a virtual environment:

uv venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
maturin develop

Or build a wheel:

maturin build --release
pip install target/wheels/unword-*.whl

Usage

CLI

# Print to stdout
unword -i document.doc

# Write to file
unword -i document.doc -o output.md

Python

import unword

doc = unword.parse_doc(open("document.doc", "rb").read())

print(doc.body_text)      # Markdown string with headings
print(doc.textboxes)      # List of textbox strings

Rust library

let data = std::fs::read("document.doc")?;
let doc = unword::parse_doc(&data)?;
println!("{}", doc.body_text);

Output format

• Headings are rendered as #, ##, ###, etc. based on Word styles
• Paragraphs are separated by blank lines
• Page breaks become ---
• Textboxes are extracted separately

Tests

# Rust
cargo test

# Python
pytest tests/test_python.py

License

MIT