I tried reading a .doc file like -

with open('file.doc', errors='ignore') as f:text = f.read()

It did read that file but with huge junk, I can't remove that junk as I don't know from where it starts and where it ends.

I also tried installing textract module which says it can read from any file format but there were many dependency issues while downloading it in Windows.

So I alternately did this with antiword command line utility, my answer is below.

You can use antiword command line utility to do this, I know most of you would have tried it but still I wanted to share.

• Download antiword from here

• Extract the antiword folder to C:\ and add the path C:\antiword to your PATH environment variable.

Here is a sample of how to use it, handling docx and doc files:

import os, docx2txt
def get_doc_text(filepath, file):if file.endswith('.docx'):text = docx2txt.process(file)return textelif file.endswith('.doc'):# converting .doc to .docxdoc_file = filepath + filedocx_file = filepath + file + 'x'if not os.path.exists(docx_file):os.system('antiword ' + doc_file + ' > ' + docx_file)with open(docx_file) as f:text = f.read()os.remove(docx_file) #docx_file was just to read, so deletingelse:# already a file with same name as doc exists having docx extension, # which means it is a different file, so we cant read itprint('Info : file with same name of doc exists having docx extension, so we cant read it')text = ''return text

Now call this function:

filepath = "D:\\input\\"
files = os.listdir(filepath)
for file in files:text = get_doc_text(filepath, file)print(text)

This could be good alternate way to read .doc file in Python on Windows.

Hope it helps, Thanks.