combine word document using python docx

Question

I have few word files that each have specific content. I would like for a snippet that show me or help me to figure out how to combine the word files into one file, while using Python docx library.

For example in pywin32 library I did the following:

rng = self.doc.Range(0, 0)
for d in data:
    time.sleep(0.05)

    docstart = d.wordDoc.Content.Start
    self.word.Visible = True
    docend = d.wordDoc.Content.End - 1
    location = d.wordDoc.Range(docstart, docend).Copy()
    rng.Paste()
    rng.Collapse(0)
    rng.InsertBreak(win32.constants.wdPageBreak)

But I need to do it while using Python docx library instead of win32.client

Answer 1

The alternative approach to merge two documents including all the styles is to use python library docxcompose ( https://pypi.org/project/docxcompose/) . We do not need to explicitly define the styling and we do not have to read the document paragraph by paragraph and append it to the master document. The usage of the python docxcompose is shown in the below code

#Importing the required packages

from docxcompose.composer import Composer
from docx import Document as Document_compose
#filename_master is name of the file you want to merge the docx file into
master = Document_compose(filename_master)

composer = Composer(master)
#filename_second_docx is the name of the second docx file
doc2 = Document_compose(filename_second_docx)
#append the doc2 into the master using composer.append function
composer.append(doc2)
#Save the combined docx with a name
composer.save("combined.docx")

If you want to merge multiple documents into one docx file you can use the below function

#Filename_master is the name of the file you want to merge all the document into
#files_list is a list containing all the filename of the docx file to be merged
def combine_all_docx(filename_master,files_list):
    number_of_sections=len(files_list)
    master = Document_compose(filename_master)
    composer = Composer(master)
    for i in range(0, number_of_sections):
        doc_temp = Document_compose(files_list[i])
        composer.append(doc_temp)
    composer.save("combined_file.docx")
#For Example
#filename_master="file1.docx"
#files_list=["file2.docx","file3.docx","file4.docx",file5.docx"]
#Calling the function
#combine_all_docx(filename_master,files_list)
#This function will combine all the document in the array files_list into the file1.docx and save the merged document into combined_file.docx