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17 May 2026

How to Automate Word Documents with Python

Discover how InkRider allows you to leverage Python to automate repetitive tasks inside Microsoft Word.

Jakub Pecanka avatar
Jakub Pecanka
InkRider Team

Microsoft Word is the undisputed king of document editing. Its formatting, layout tools, and ecosystem are unparalleled. But when it comes to injecting live data, generating repetitive tables, or keeping figures up to date across dozens of reports, doing it by hand becomes a nightmare.

Historically, the solutions were clunky:

  1. Write VBA macros (which are slow, hard to maintain, and use an outdated language).
  2. Generate the entire document outside of Word using Python libraries like python-docx (which means you lose Word's visual editor).

Enter InkRider

InkRider bridges the gap. It is an Office Add-in that embeds a Python kernel right inside your Word document.

With InkRider, you can:

  • Fetch Live Data: Use standard Python libraries (requests, pandas) to pull data directly from your APIs or databases.
  • Generate Tables Dynamically: Process your data and render it as a native Word table, skipping the manual copy-pasting.
  • Maintain Styling: Use Python for the dynamic data while keeping your company's official Word templates and styles untouched.

A Simple Example

Imagine you need to insert today's exchange rates into a contract. Instead of looking them up and typing them out, you can run a quick cell:

import requests

response = requests.get("https://api.exchangerate-api.com/v4/latest/USD")
rates = response.json()["rates"]

print(f"Current EUR rate: {rates['EUR']}")

InkRider will capture that output and insert it into your document wherever your cursor is.

By combining the programmatic power of Python with the visual editing power of Word, you can turn static documents into dynamic, data-driven reports.

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