Markdown to DOCX with Templates

Convert markdown to professionally styled Word documents. Not plain exports — beautiful, branded documents with your fonts, colors, and table styling applied automatically.

When to Use

• User wants to convert markdown to Word/DOCX
• User needs a branded document from markdown source
• User asks about exporting markdown with styling
• User mentions "md to docx", "markdown to word", or similar

Prerequisites

• pandoc installed (brew install pandoc on macOS)
• Python 3.8+ with packages: python-docx, lxml, click, pyyaml

Installation

Clone this skill's scripts to your preferred location:

git clone https://github.com/jonnyschneider/skills.git
cd skills/skills/md-to-docx-template
pip install python-docx lxml click pyyaml

Quick Conversion

./md-to-docx.py input.md -o output.docx

With Custom Template

Option A: Generate template with specific fonts/colors

./create-reference-template.py template.docx \
  --font-body "DM Sans" \
  --font-heading "DM Sans" \
  --accent-color "0D494D" \
  --heading-color "0D494D"

./md-to-docx.py input.md -o output.docx --template template.docx

Option B: Extract styles from existing branded document

# Full pipeline for best results:
./extract-styles.py source-branded.docx template.docx
./md-to-docx.py input.md -o output.docx --template template.docx --no-fix-indent
./apply-template-styles.py template.docx output.docx
./fix-table-headers.py output.docx

Multi-file Documents

Create a manifest.yaml:

template: template.docx
output: final-document.docx
sections:
  - 01-intro.md
  - 02-content.md
  - 03-conclusion.md

Then run:

./md-to-docx.py manifest.yaml --open

Key Options

Option	Description
-o, --output	Output DOCX path
--template	Custom reference template
--toc	Generate table of contents
--open	Open after building
--no-fix-indent	Skip list indent fix (use with extract pipeline)

Template Options

Option	Description
--font-body	Body text font (default: Calibri)
--font-heading	Heading font (default: Calibri)
--font-mono	Code font (default: Consolas)
--accent-color	Table header color (hex, default: 4472C4)
--heading-color	Heading text color (hex, default: 000000)

Limitations

• Custom fonts must be installed on target machines
• Complex tables may not render perfectly
• SVG images require rsvg-convert
• Some pandoc quirks require post-processing scripts