DOCX headings outline
Extract a Word (.docx) document's heading hierarchy into a downloadable JSON outline.
Working…
Questions people ask
- Which paragraph styles count as headings?
- Only Word's built-in heading styles for levels 1–9. The match is made on the style's canonical identifier (Heading1…Heading9, stable across editing languages) with the display name ("Heading 1") as a case-insensitive fallback. A custom paragraph style is never treated as a heading, however heading-like its name; the tool under-reports rather than guessing.
- What happens when levels are skipped?
- The outline follows the levels literally: a level-4 heading after a level-2 heading nests under that level-2 parent (one step per level beyond) and the skip is counted in the report (skipped steps). Nothing is renamed or normalised.
- What about repeated or empty headings?
- Every instance is kept: repeated headings all appear, and an empty heading is kept as a level marker with empty text. Body paragraphs, tables and headers/footers are ignored entirely.
- What if the document has no headings?
- A legitimate result: an empty outline (count 0) with the recognition rules still stated. A corrupt or non-Word file fails with a named error instead.