Incorrect column count estimation on some tables

[jsanchezf]

I am trying to parse a large set of documents and extract information from tables contained within. However, python-docx is not navigating correctly the table cells. I think it is due to inconsistency in the column count. len(_Row.cells) is in some cases greater than
Table._column_count.

I attach a sample document, a simple parsing script and the resulting output to show the problem.

extract_FP.py.txt
Sample-log.txt
Sample.docx

[jsanchezf]

I was mistaken, it is not a problem with column count. The problem is in Table._cells that does not take into account cells never returned by CT_Tbl.iter_tcs(). The table in the sample document has a tenth column mentioned in the w:tblGrid children, but never appears as a w:tc in any of the w:tr's. This circumstance trips Table._cells that returns a 83-cell list, when it should return 90. Since the count is wrong, Table.cell() now returns the wrong cell, Same for Table.column_cells() and Table.row_cells(), that return the wrong set of cells.

Unsure about how to fix it, however, since I am not familiarized with the full range of possibilities of the format.

[julietKiloRomeo]

I seem to be affected by the same issue. When trying to convert tables to markdown I have the following:

  markdown_table = []
  for i, row in enumerate(table.rows):
      # Process each cell in the row
      markdown_row = [";".join(process_paragraph(para) for para in cell.paragraphs) for cell in row.cells]
      ...

which fails with an index error on row.cells:

    171 for grid_span_idx in range(tc.grid_span):
    172     if tc.vMerge == ST_Merge.CONTINUE:
--> 173         cells.append(cells[-col_count])
    174     elif grid_span_idx > 0:
    175         cells.append(cells[-1])

IndexError: list index out of range

which comes either from self._column_count being too large or from cells being skipped in self._tbl.iter_tcs():

(from table.py)

    @property
    def _cells(self) -> list[_Cell]:
        """A sequence of |_Cell| objects, one for each cell of the layout grid.

        If the table contains a span, one or more |_Cell| object references are
        repeated.
        """
        col_count = self._column_count
        cells: list[_Cell] = []
        for tc in self._tbl.iter_tcs():
            for grid_span_idx in range(tc.grid_span):
                if tc.vMerge == ST_Merge.CONTINUE:
                    cells.append(cells[-col_count])
                elif grid_span_idx > 0:
                    cells.append(cells[-1])
                else:
                    cells.append(_Cell(tc, self))
        return cells

is there any way to detect when the iter_tcs skips to the next row?