antiword
Spew anything out as text to stdout
Decision gist · record as of 2026-08-14
No. The package is abandoned with no updates since 2021-10-19, making it a maintenance liability. For active document-to-text conversion, use maintained alternatives. If you must wrap LibreOffice, consider writing a small inline helper rather than depending on unmaintained code.AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying
Before you install
- LibreOffice must be installed and available on the system PATH for the package to function.
- Low install friction with no runtime dependencies.
- However, the package is abandoned—last release was 2021-10-19 with no commits since.
License · maintenance · safety
MIT (permissive) — MIT license is permissive, allowing commercial and private use with minimal restrictions.
last release 2021-10-19 (1760 days) · last repo commit 2021-10-19
0 known vulnerabilities (OSV.dev, 2026-08-14) · 76,568 downloads/mo, #14,615 on PyPI
Alternatives
Verify before relying
pip install antiword
import antiword
text_output = antiword.convert(document_path)- Whether LibreOffice must be pre-installed or if the package handles installation
- Which document formats are supported beyond what LibreOffice can convert
- Performance characteristics and memory usage for large documents
What it is and what it does
Antiword is a thin Python wrapper around LibreOffice's command-line text conversion tool. It invokes `libreoffice --convert-to txt` to convert documents to plain text, capturing the output and cleaning up temporary files automatically. The package has no runtime dependencies beyond requiring LibreOffice itself to be available on the system.
The package is designed as a convenience layer for developers who need to extract text from documents programmatically. Since its single release in October 2021, it has received no updates or maintenance. It requires Python 3.9+ and is suitable only for environments where LibreOffice is already installed or can be reliably provisioned.
Use it for
- Extract text from Word documents or other office formats in a Python script
- Batch convert document collections to plain text for text processing pipelines
- Build document indexing or search systems that need text extraction from office files
Worth the install?
AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page. Verify before relying on it.
No.
The package is abandoned with no updates since 2021-10-19, making it a maintenance liability. For active document-to-text conversion, use maintained alternatives. If you must wrap LibreOffice, consider writing a small inline helper rather than depending on unmaintained code.
Install
antiword on PyPI
Before you install
Low install friction with no runtime dependencies. However, the package is abandoned—last release was 2021-10-19 with no commits since. Requires Python 3.9+ and depends on LibreOffice being installed on the system.
LibreOffice must be installed and available on the system PATH for the package to function.
License in practice
MIT license is permissive, allowing commercial and private use with minimal restrictions.
Quickstart
pip install antiword
import antiword
text_output = antiword.convert(document_path)Verify before relying
- Whether LibreOffice must be pre-installed or if the package handles installation
- Which document formats are supported beyond what LibreOffice can convert
- Performance characteristics and memory usage for large documents
Package facts
| License | MIT permissive |
| Python support | Supports the current Python release >=3.9,<4.0 |
| Install friction | Low. Pure-Python wheel |
| Runtime dependencies | None |
| Maintenance | Abandoned 1,760 days since the last release |
| Last repo commit | |
| First released | |
| Downloads | 76,568 / month, #14,615 on PyPI 30-day window, as of 2026-08-14 |
| Known vulnerabilities | None known OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-14 |
| Classifiers | License :: OSI Approved :: MIT LicenseProgramming Language :: Python :: 3Programming Language :: Python :: 3.9 |
Evidence: antiword-0.1.0-py3-none-any.whl
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