ms word - read an MSWord file into R

Question

Is it possible to read an MSWord 2010 file into R? I have Windows 7 and a Dell PC.

I am using the line:

my.data <- readLines('c:/users/mark w miller/simple R programs/test_for_r.docx')

to try to read an MSWord file containing the following text:

A   20  1000    AA
B   30  1001    BB
C   10  1500    CC

I get a warning message that says:

Warning message: In readLines("c:/users/mark w miller/simple R programs/test_for_r.docx") : incomplete final line found on 'c:/users/mark w miller/simple R programs/test_for_r.docx'

and my.data appears to be gibberish:

# [1] "PK030424" "¤l"             "èF???átí"

I know with this simple example I could easily convert the MSWord file to a different format. However, my actual data files consist of complex tables that were typed decades ago and then scanned into pdf documents later. Age of the original paper document and perhaps imperfections in the original paper, typing and/or scanning process has resulted in some letters and numbers not being very clear. So far converting the pdf files to MSWord seems to be the most successful at correctly translating the tables. Converting the MSWord files to Excel or rich text, etc, has not been very successful. Even after conversion to MSWord the resulting files are very complex and contain numerous errors. I thought if I could read the MSWord files into R that might be the most efficient way to edit and correct them.

I am aware of 'package tm' that I guess can read MSWord files into R, but I am a little concerned about using it because it seems to require installing third-party software.

Thank you for any suggestions.

Answer 1

First, readLines() is not the correct solution, since a Word file is not a text (that is plain, ASCII text) file.

The Word-related function in the tm package is called readDOC() but both it and the required third-party tool (Antiword) are for older Word files (up to Word 2003) and will not work using newer .docx files.

The best I can suggest is that you try readPDF(), also found in the tm package. Note: it requires that the tool pdftotext is installed on your system. Easy for Linux, no idea about Windows. Alternatively, find a Windows tool which converts PDF to plain, ASCII text files (not Word files) - they should open and display correctly using Notepad on Windows - then try readLines() again. However, given that your PDF files are old and come from a scanner, conversion to text might be difficult.

Finally: I realise that you did not make the original decision in this instance, but for anybody else - Word and PDF are not appropriate formats for storing data that you want to parse.