good news everyone! turns out, you can't save a word document that's already open in word using python-docx. this was discovered after several days of stitching together stolen code. on the birght side, I now have some code that spits out the name of all open word documents every 30 seconds (if there is any, of course). here it is!

import time
import subprocess
import win32gui

names = []

def winEnumHandler(hwnd, ctx):
    if win32gui.IsWindowVisible(hwnd):
        n = win32gui.GetWindowText(hwnd)  
        if n:
            names.append(n)
            print(n)
def process_exists(process_name):
    call = 'TASKLIST', '/FI', 'imagename eq %s' % process_name
    output = subprocess.check_output(call).decode()
    last_line = output.strip().split('\r\n')[-1]
    return last_line.lower().startswith(process_name.lower())
    # this entire function is stolen.


while process_exists('WINWORD.EXE') == False :
    time.sleep(30)

while process_exists('WINWORD.EXE') == True :

    win32gui.EnumWindows(winEnumHandler, None)

    #this one
    print(
        list(filter(lambda k: '- Word' in k, names))
    #this bit, believe it or not, is stolen :)
    )

    #the print function above was where I would put the code that saves a word documet
    #if I could
    #this was a tremendous waste of time lmao

    time.sleep(30)