Is there any way to read .docx file include auto numbering using python-docx

Question

Problem statement: Extract sections from .docx file including autonumbering.

I tried python-docx to extract text from .docx file but it excludes the autonumbering.

Answer 1

It appears that currently python-docx v0.8 does not fully support numbering. You need to do some hacking.

First, for the demo, to iterate the document paragraphs, you need to write your own iterator. Here is something functional:

import docx.document
import docx.oxml.table
import docx.oxml.text.paragraph
import docx.table
import docx.text.paragraph


def iter_paragraphs(parent, recursive=True):
    """
    Yield each paragraph and table child within *parent*, in document order.
    Each returned value is an instance of Paragraph. *parent*
    would most commonly be a reference to a main Document object, but
    also works for a _Cell object, which itself can contain paragraphs and tables.
    """
    if isinstance(parent, docx.document.Document):
        parent_elm = parent.element.body
    elif isinstance(parent, docx.table._Cell):
        parent_elm = parent._tc
    else:
        raise TypeError(repr(type(parent)))

    for child in parent_elm.iterchildren():
        if isinstance(child, docx.oxml.text.paragraph.CT_P):
            yield docx.text.paragraph.Paragraph(child, parent)
        elif isinstance(child, docx.oxml.table.CT_Tbl):
            if recursive:
                table = docx.table.Table(child, parent)
                for row in table.rows:
                    for cell in row.cells:
                        for child_paragraph in iter_paragraphs(cell):
                            yield child_paragraph

You can use it to find all document paragraphs including paragraphs in table cells.

For instance:

import docx

document = docx.Document("sample.docx")
for paragraph in iter_paragraphs(document):
    print(paragraph.text)

To access the numbering property, you need to search in the "protected" members paragraph._p.pPr.numPr, which is a docx.oxml.numbering.CT_NumPr object:

for paragraph in iter_paragraphs(document):
    num_pr = paragraph._p.pPr.numPr
    if num_pr is not None:
        print(num_pr)  # type: docx.oxml.numbering.CT_NumPr

Note that this object is extracted from the numbering.xml file (inside the docx), if it exists.

To access it, you need to read your docx file like a package. For instance:

import docx.package
import docx.parts.document
import docx.parts.numbering

package = docx.package.Package.open("sample.docx")

main_document_part = package.main_document_part
assert isinstance(main_document_part, docx.parts.document.DocumentPart)

numbering_part = main_document_part.numbering_part
assert isinstance(numbering_part, docx.parts.numbering.NumberingPart)

ct_numbering = numbering_part._element
print(ct_numbering)  # CT_Numbering
for num in ct_numbering.num_lst:
    print(num)  # CT_Num
    print(num.abstractNumId)  # CT_DecimalNumber

Mor information is available in the Office Open XMl documentation.

Answer 2

There is a package, docx2python which does this in a lot simpler fashion: pypi.org/project/docx2python/

The following code:

from docx2python import docx2python
document = docx2python("C:/input/MyDoc.docx")
print(document.body)

produces a list which contains the contents including bullet lists in a nice parse-able fashion.