The cesspool that is MS Word

[StevenBlack]

Presently stymied by the utter BS that is MS word.

This issue is a place to list content patterns, and devise tactics, to extract content from Word.

This issue is a spec that is a work in process.

Feel free to edit and augment comments as opposed to adding to the thread. We can create separate issues for individual tactics, cross-referencing them back here.

[StevenBlack]

Tables – structures

I wonder, are these all the same, having headers with at least one identifiable first column like ["Field", "Field Name", ...]? If so one transform might be good for them all. Note there can be a variable number of columns in these tables.

Examples from S5C3.

DH: I don't think they're all the same, unfortunately. Here's one from S5C2, which uses "Field" rather than "Field Name".

Another

[StevenBlack]

Tables – property lists

Example from S5C3.

DH: I didn't check too many docs, but in S4, I think there's some consistency: this is S4G489:

S4G548 has a table with the same headers.

[StevenBlack]

Tables – property values

Example from S5C3.

DH: Probably no consistency here. This is from S4G387; note the property name (RowSourceType) in the column header:

[StevenBlack]

Tables – callouts

Cool

Example from S5C3.

Design

Example from S5C2.

Bug

Example from S5C2.

DH: I'm guessing these are consistent since they're basically two column tables with no header.

[StevenBlack]

Tables – code examples

Possibly easy to identify as squat 2-column table with Example in column 1.

Example from S5C3.

DH: I'm pretty sure this is consistent.

[StevenBlack]

Tables – mundane lists

These might be easy to identify as 2-column tables with headers of the form <something that is not ["Value", ...]> and ["Description", "Purpose"...].

Examples from S5C3.

Examples from S1C2.

[StevenBlack]

Tables - "colspan" headers

These will likely be problematic. Easy enough to identify, I reckon.

Examples from S1C2.

[StevenBlack]

Tables — simple

And then we have simple, generic tables; these should be easy. These are just another mundane list?

Example from S1C5.