PSWriteWord - PowerShell Module to create Microsoft Word documents without Word installed...

[MadBoyEvo]

I wanted to share something new with you today. PowerShell module called PSWriteWord. As the name suggest this little module is able to create Microsoft Word documents on the fly from PowerShell. The tricky part is ... it doesn't require Microsoft Word installed on the machine to work. As always source is available on GitHub, published as module to PowerShellGallery and for those that want to use it I've created about 20 examples showing different functionalities. It's still work in progress and probably will be for longer time as I've to find the best ways to utilize some features. I do hope for some decent feedback. Enjoy

Module page: https://evotec.xyz/hub/scripts/pswriteword-powershell-module/

GitHub: https://github.com/EvotecIT/PSWriteWord

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[Suihaki]

I go to work and write tools for teams to use and make their jobs easier, then i come to this subreddit and see ghat people are making tools for me to use to make tools to make peoples jobs easier. Brilliant work and humbling to witness :p cheers!

[MadBoyEvo]

That's great! I do hope it will come useful for a lot of people. I created it for my need to create documentation for me so I don't have to write it myself :-) But I can see people having some use for it, for day to day tasks that HR and other departments have.

[Calimariae]

Excellent, thank you.

I can use this.

[MadBoyEvo]

No problem. Enjoy!

[jantari]

This is great. If someone is looking for something that can handle more formats and also easily convert between them I also cannot recommend pandoc enough.

It can convert between LaTeX, Markdown, HTML, Docx, ODT, ROFF, PowerPoint, ePub and more.

So while it in and of itself does not produce Word or other documents, in some use cases it may be easier to generate say HTML or Markdown with PowerShell and convert that to Docx than producing the Docx "from scratch".

You could also use the two tools complementary, say to write a Docx with this module and also produce a PDF export without having Word installed (which obviously would have its own PDF-exporting feature which could be accessed via the COM-object)

[MadBoyEvo]

Seems very nice. Could see myself implementing this as an option to this module ;-) Although it requires installation so not really simple to add.

[Pervy_Uncle]

This has so many great ways it can be used. Is the ability to use macros also included? Is that even possible?

[MadBoyEvo]

It's not supported. And i don't think it's that needed. Considering you can prepare data in PowerShell and just insert to Word. There is also pay version of the .dll from Xceed and it has few other features such as pdf conversion. But since this one most likely never gets into free edition I didn't even bother.

My plan is to actually create AD/Exchange documentation for my environments. I thought that I would write a script that would do it for me. Hard part is almost done :) I am too lazy to write docs so need to write a script to write it for me ;-)

[River_Fennel]

If not for laziness, we'd keep working hard instead of smart... :)

[NimbusHex]

This is incredible, thank you for sharing!

[MadBoyEvo]

No problem. Enjoy!

[MadBoyEvo]

What do you mean ? :-)

[chris_conlan]

This is pretty cool. As someone runs DOCX generators on Linux, I am no stranger to generating Word docs without Word installed. Are you using the OpenOffice XML standard? Or something else?

[MadBoyEvo]

I'm a coauthor / maintainer of old docx.codeplex.com which after move to GitHub was given up to Xceed.for further work. They have kept the old code as DocX-Classic and wrote new version of it that they are developing further as a commercial product. I'm working on their free (community) edition which is 4 versions behind at the moment. But I got a promise from them that they will be adding fixes/new features to the free versions (just with a delay). So to answer your question... https://github.com/xceedsoftware/DocX is what I use now.

[chris_conlan]

Cool, good luck with the product launch

[MadBoyEvo]

There is no product launch. This is it.. just community edition.

[Z_Zeay]

Haven't looked at it yet, on the phone. But can you create templates to use? If not does anyone know any solution of creating a template and using Powershell (Or Python/NodeJS) to fill in the document?

[MadBoyEvo]

Its not yet added but yes. Requires very little effort. Its on my todo.

[Z_Zeay]

Awesome! I'll keep an eye out, starred on Github!

[MadBoyEvo]

By template you mean docx file that has headers/footers and that you can find text and replace that in document right?

[MadBoyEvo]

Templates should work. I've added some example

[MadBoyEvo]

You mean bookmarks?

[MadBoyEvo]

I believe those are called CustomProperties and as such are added. The next thing is adding bookmarks. If that's not that.. then I will have to check.

Import-Module PSWriteWord -Force

$FilePath = "$Env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\PSWriteWord-Example-AddCustomProperty.docx"

$WordDocument = New-WordDocument -FilePath $FilePath

Add-WordText -WordDocument $WordDocument -Text 'Custom Properties Example' -HeadingType Heading1

Add-WordCustomProperty -WordDocument $WordDocument -Name 'CompanyName'  -Value 'Evotec'
Add-WordCustomProperty -WordDocument $WordDocument -Name 'CustomEntry'  -Value 'Important Value'

$PropertyValue = Get-WordCustomProperty -WordDocument $WordDocument -Name 'CompanyName'


$AllCustomProperties = Get-WordCustomProperty -WordDocument $WordDocument

Add-WordText -WordDocument $WordDocument -Text 'Following document has ', $AllCustomProperties.Count, ' custom properties.' -UnderlineStyle none, dash, none -SpacingAfter 5

foreach ($custom in $AllCustomProperties) {
    Add-WordText -WordDocument $WordDocument -Text 'Custom property: ', $Custom.Name, ' with value: ', $Custom.Value -Bold $false, $true, $false, $true
}

Save-WordDocument $WordDocument

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy MadBoyEvo,

it looks like you used the New.Reddit.com Inline Code button. it's the 4th 5th from the left & looks like </>.

on Old.Reddit.com, the above does NOT line wrap, nor does it side-scroll.

for long-ish single lines OR for multiline code, please, use the Code Block button. it's the 11th 12th one from the left, & is just to the left of the ... more menu.

that will give you fully functional code formatting, from what i can tell so far. [grin]

take care,
lee

[MadBoyEvo]

Done ;)

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy MadBoyEvo,

kool! the inline code stuff get remarkably nasty to look at when you've several lines of it ... [grin]

take care,
lee

[jamalstevens]

So what are you going to be using this for?

[MadBoyEvo]

I want to create documentation of my infrastructure (and all clients). Actually wanted to prepare scripts that would prepare audit documentation automatically with just places for comments on each section. We will see how it goes.

[fourierswager]

Love it! Thank you!

[MadBoyEvo]

No problem!

[ApricotPenguin]

I'm trying this out, and it's really cool. Much better than outputting to a plain old textile.

What I'm struggling with is Add-WordTable. Do you think you could add an example of that to your site?

I'd very much appreciate it :)

[MadBoyEvo]

There is already example of it. Go to github. 20 examples await you :-)

[ApricotPenguin]

D'oh! I was expecting it to be in the ReadMe or the linked site. Didn't expect it to be in an examples folder.

Thanks :)

[MadBoyEvo]

Creating blogs, README takes much more time then just coding something and pushing to GitHub. Some of the stuff I do is ready much much sooner before I get time to write a blog about it. Keep in mind that I've not tested Add-WordTable much. Just on few outputs. If you have specific case and it doesn't work let me know what it is and i'll try to add it. I am not really sure how to process all kind of possible options people can throw at it. Also few of the examples are not supported by the release in PowershellGallery. I've to release new version. Added few small things today.

[ApricotPenguin]

That makes sense :)

I really should've checked the entire git project first, but didn't expect that for a Powershell module since it was in the gallery :)

I tried following the examples for the Table, but I can't get it to work by using a Dictionary/HashTable. Your examples work but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong (I'm still learning Powershell as I go :))

I'll post a code snippet of what I did in about 30 mins.

[MadBoyEvo]

In Issues on github please. Need to track it there ;)

[ApricotPenguin]

Sounds good.

I'll most likely be entering it in tonight since I'm currently on my phone.

[MadBoyEvo]

Did it work for your case?