officecat 0.2.1

View Office files in the terminal

officecat 🐱

A CLI tool to view Office files in the terminal. Think cat but for .docx, .pptx, .xlsx, .csv, and .tsv files.

Every supported format is converted to markdown internally, then rendered through a single unified pipeline.

Installation

pip install officecat

Or install from source:

git clone https://github.com/mubbie/officecat.git
cd officecat
pip install -e .

Usage

officecat report.docx              # colored formatted output (default)
officecat budget.xlsx              # spreadsheet as markdown table
officecat slides.pptx              # presentation content
officecat data.csv                 # CSV and TSV
officecat report.docx --tui        # interactive full-screen viewer
officecat budget.xlsx | head       # plain text (auto-detected pipe)
officecat slides.pptx --json       # JSON output
officecat --version                # show version
officecat update                   # update to latest version

Files must be local. OneDrive/SharePoint files that are "cloud-only" (not synced) will fail to open. Right-click the file and choose "Always keep on this device" to sync it first.

Output Modes

• Rich (default): Colored, formatted output to stdout. Works with less -R.
• TUI (--tui): Full-screen interactive viewer with scrolling.
• Plain (auto when piped, or --plain): Raw markdown for piping to grep, head, awk.
• JSON (--json): {"source": "...", "markdown": "..."} for scripting.

Options

Flag	Short	Description
--tui	-t	Interactive full-screen viewer
--plain	-p	Raw markdown text, no colors
--json	-j	JSON output
--head N	-n N	Show first N lines
--sheet S	-s S	Select sheet by name or 1-based index (xlsx only)
--slide N		Show only slide N (pptx only)
--headers N	-h N	Promote row N as headers (xlsx/csv, default: 1, 0 to disable)
--all	-a	Disable the default 500-row cap
--version	-v	Show version

TUI Key Bindings

Key	Action
q	Quit
Up / Down	Scroll
PgUp / PgDn	Page scroll
Home / End	Jump to top/bottom

Examples

# Quick view of a document
officecat report.docx

# Browse interactively
officecat report.docx --tui

# Specific sheet
officecat budget.xlsx --sheet "Q4 Summary"

# Specific slide
officecat deck.pptx --slide 3

# First 10 lines
officecat budget.xlsx --head 10

# JSON output
officecat report.docx --json | jq '.markdown'

# Pipe to grep
officecat data.xlsx --plain | grep "revenue"

# Self-update
officecat update

Supported Formats

• Word (.docx): headings, paragraphs, lists, tables in document order
• PowerPoint (.pptx): slides, shapes, images, speaker notes, hidden slides
• Excel (.xlsx): all sheets, row cap, header promotion
• CSV (.csv): auto-delimited
• TSV (.tsv): tab-delimited

Legacy binary formats (.doc, .ppt, .xls) show a conversion hint.

Known Limitations

• Files must be local. Remote/cloud-only files (OneDrive, SharePoint) need to be synced first.
• All content is rendered as markdown. Spreadsheet tables are markdown tables, not interactive grids.
• DOCX list detection is style-name-based and may miss custom list styles.
• PPTX grouped shapes and embedded tables show as placeholders.
• PPTX charts and SmartArt are not extracted.
• XLSX formulas show cached/computed values, not formula strings.
• Large spreadsheets are capped at 500 rows by default. Use --all to show everything.
• TUI enforces a 1000-line cap with --all for performance. Use --plain for full output.
• No decryption of password-protected files.
• Legacy binary formats (.doc, .ppt, .xls) are not supported.

License

MIT