office-docs

office-docs

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A skills library that teaches coding agents how to read and write Microsoft Office files — Word (.docx/.doc) and Excel (.xlsx/.xls/.csv) — on Windows, primarily by driving the installed Office applications through PowerShell COM automation.

Inspired by the structure of obra/superpowers: each skill is a self-contained SKILL.md with a focused trigger, and the agent loads it on demand.

Why COM automation?

Driving the real Word/Excel application via COM gives you exact rendering, real formula recalculation, native PDF export, and legacy .doc/.xls support — the output matches what a user sees. The cost is that it is Windows-only, requires Office installed and an interactive session, and demands careful COM cleanup. When those constraints don't fit (CI, headless, bulk data), the skills point you to library-based alternatives.

Skills

Skill	Use it when
office-docs-overview	Deciding how to handle an Office file; COM vs library; safety prerequisites
word-com-powershell	Reading/writing/editing/generating Word documents or exporting to PDF
excel-com-powershell	Reading/writing cells, ranges, formulas, sheets; Excel → PDF
office-com-cleanup	Leaked WINWORD.EXE/EXCEL.EXE (or wps.exe/et.exe on WPS), locked files, hung scripts, COM release pattern

Bundled scripts

Each automation skill ships ready-to-run PowerShell scripts under skills/<skill>/scripts/, all implementing the full open → try/finally → release lifecycle:

• Word: Get-WordText.ps1, Set-WordReplace.ps1, Convert-WordToPdf.ps1, Invoke-WordTemplate.ps1
• Excel: Get-ExcelData.ps1, Set-ExcelData.ps1, Convert-ExcelToPdf.ps1

Example:

# Extract all text and tables from a Word document
.\skills\word-com-powershell\scripts\Get-WordText.ps1 -Path .\report.docx -IncludeTables

# Fill a {{placeholder}} template
.\skills\word-com-powershell\scripts\Invoke-WordTemplate.ps1 `
    -TemplatePath .\invoice.docx -OutPath .\out.docx `
    -Values @{ CLIENT = 'Acme'; TOTAL = '$1,200' }

# Write a CSV into a formatted .xlsx
.\skills\excel-com-powershell\scripts\Set-ExcelData.ps1 -CsvPath .\people.csv -OutPath .\people.xlsx

Requirements

• Windows with Microsoft Office (Word/Excel) or WPS Office installed. WPS registers itself under the Microsoft COM ProgIDs (Word.Application / Excel.Application), so the same scripts work — but WPS covers a subset of the API, and its hidden processes are wps.exe / et.exe, not WINWORD.EXE / EXCEL.EXE. See WPS compatibility.
• Windows PowerShell 5.1 or PowerShell 7+
• An interactive desktop session (COM automation of Office is unsupported under Session 0 / service accounts)

Using these skills

With agents that support the skills/SKILL.md convention

Point your agent at this repository (or install it as a plugin). Skills are auto-discovered from the skills/ directory; the agent reads a SKILL.md when its description trigger matches the task. See AGENTS.md.

Claude Code (plugin)

This repo is packaged as a Claude Code plugin via .claude-plugin/. Installation:

1. Register this repo as a marketplace:

   /plugin marketplace add G-Yong/office-docs
   

2. Install the plugin from that marketplace:

   /plugin install office-docs@office-docs
   

If you want to customize the plugin, fork this repo first and replace the repo name in step 1 with <your-username>/office-docs.

WPS compatibility

WPS Office (Kingsoft) registers itself as a COM compatibility shim under the Microsoft ProgIDs Word.Application and Excel.Application. When WPS is installed without Microsoft Office, the scripts in this repo drive WPS Writer / Spreadsheets instead of Word / Excel.

What works: basic open/read/write, SaveAs, PDF export, most common properties and methods.

Caveats:

• WPS implements a subset of the Office COM API — some advanced members, enum values, and formatting features may be missing.
• The hidden processes are wps.exe (Writer), et.exe (Spreadsheets), and wpp.exe (Presentation). Process checks that only look for WINWORD.EXE / EXCEL.EXE will miss WPS leaks.
• WPS also exposes its own native ProgIDs: KWPS.Application, KET.Application.

To confirm which application you are driving:

$app = New-Object -ComObject Word.Application
$app.Path   # Kingsoft\WPS Office\... → it's WPS