Office render

Office Render (macOS, real Microsoft Office)

Overview

To verify how a .docx/.pptx/.xlsx looks, render it with the installed Microsoft Office app, not LibreOffice. LibreOffice substitutes fonts and re-flows complex layouts — it renders a 3-across team grid as a vertical list and swaps the typeface, so what you "see" isn't what the user sees. Word/PowerPoint produce the exact, pixel-faithful page; then convert the PDF to images you can read.

Pipeline: Office file → (real Word/PowerPoint/Excel) → PDF → (pdftoppm) → page JPGs.

When to use

• "Show me / screenshot / preview this Word doc (or deck, or spreadsheet)."
• Visually QA a .docx/.pptx you just generated (python-docx, python-pptx) — confirm fonts, tables, images, and slide layout look right.
• A LibreOffice render looks wrong (substituted font, broken table/grid, RTL flipped) and you need the true rendering.
• Read a doc whose layout matters (not just text — for text, markitdown/pandoc is fine).

Skip when you only need the text (use pandoc -t plain / python -m markitdown), or you're not on macOS / Office isn't installed (fall back to soffice --headless --convert-to pdf, accepting lower fidelity).

Usage

uv run --no-project --with docx2pdf python3 ~/.claude/skills/office-render/scripts/office_render.py \
    "/path/to/file.pptx" --out /tmp/render --dpi 150

--no-project is not optional cosmetics: without it, uv run tries to install the surrounding directory as a project, and if the CWD (or any parent) holds a pyproject.toml with no [project] table — common in tool-only repos — it aborts with No 'project' table found before the script ever runs. --no-project tells uv to just build an ephemeral env from --with and ignore whatever project it's sitting inside. Harmless when there's no pyproject either, so always pass it.

It writes file.pdf + file-1.jpg, file-2.jpg, … into --out and prints the paths. Then Read the JPGs. Options: --format png, --pdf-only, --dpi N (150 is plenty; the page is small on screen). Works for .docx, .pptx, .xlsx.

One page often has trailing whitespace — crop to content before placing it elsewhere (PIL: alpha/near-white bbox).

One-time setup

Only one permission is required — Full Disk Access is NOT needed (the script sidesteps the file-access sandbox entirely; see below):

1. Automation — lets the terminal control Office via Apple events. System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation → enable Microsoft Word / PowerPoint / Excel under your terminal/IDE app (Terminal, iTerm, Ghostty, VS Code…). First run also pops a prompt — approve it once.

2. File access — handled automatically, nothing to do. Office apps are sandboxed and only freely read the standard folders (Downloads, Documents, Desktop); opening a file elsewhere would pop a "Grant File Access" powerbox. This script avoids that by always running the Office app inside ~/Downloads — it copies INPUT there, exports the PDF there, then moves the PDF to --out with Python (which isn't sandboxed). So the powerbox never appears no matter where your files live or whether PowerPoint is already open, without Full Disk Access. (Optional: if you manually drive Office against arbitrary paths outside this script, granting the Office apps Full Disk Access avoids the powerbox there too — but this script doesn't need it.)

Gotchas (each one cost real debugging — they're baked into the script)

Symptom	Cause	Fix (in script)
Message not understood / "Grant File Access" dialog	Office sandbox can't read the file's folder	Shouldn't occur: the script always stages through ~/Downloads. If you see it during manual Office use outside the script, give the app Full Disk Access or keep files in Downloads/Documents/Desktop.
AppleEvent timed out (-1712)	PDF export slower than the default Apple-event timeout	Wrap the save in with timeout of 600 seconds (script does this).
Word: active document doesn't understand the "save as" message (-1708)	Word's AppleScript save as is broken on several builds	Use docx2pdf for .docx (it uses a path that works), not raw save as.
not allowed to send Apple events	Automation permission not granted	Approve the first-run prompt / enable it in the Automation pane (≠ Full Disk Access on the terminal).
uv aborts: No 'project' table found in …/pyproject.toml	uv run adopted a stray pyproject.toml in the CWD/parent (tool-only repo, no [project] table)	Pass --no-project (see Usage) — build the env from --with, ignore the surrounding project.
Grid/table renders as a vertical list; wrong font	You used LibreOffice	Use this skill (real Office). LibreOffice ≠ faithful for complex layouts.

How it works (reference)

• .docx → PDF: docx2pdf (drives real Word). Raw AppleScript save as is unreliable per the table above.
• .pptx → PDF: osascript: save active presentation in (POSIX file PDF) as save as PDF inside with timeout.
• .xlsx → PDF: osascript: save active workbook in PDF as PDF file format (best-effort; spreadsheets paginate awkwardly — set print area in the file for clean output).
• PDF → images: pdftoppm -jpeg -r 150 (poppler).

The script copies the input into ~/Downloads/.office-render, quits the target app for a clean state, converts there (so the sandbox never prompts), then moves the PDF to --out and renders it. If the convert fails it reports the exact fix (usually a missing Automation permission).