How to convert a text file into a Word document on Linux

Last updated on July 25, 2020 by Dan Nanni

Question: I want to prepare a Microsoft Word document on Linux, but of course without using any Microsoft product. Is there a way to convert a text file into a Word document on Linux?

If you want to create a Word document without using Microsoft Word on Linux, one way of course is to use Linux-based office suite software, such as LibreOffice, WPS Office or ONLYOFFICE. These Linux-based office suites typically provide options to convert documents to Microsoft Word format.

If you do not want to install such heavyweight office suite program, an alternative way is the following: prepare content in a plain text file and then convert the text file into a Word document.

For this purpose, you can use a command-line utility called pandoc, which converts from one markup format to another from the command line.

Install `pandoc` on Linux

For Ubuntu, Debian or Linux Mint:

$ sudo apt-get install pandoc

For Fedora:

$ sudo yum install pandoc

For CentOS or RHEL:

On CentOS, first enable EPEL repo, and then use yum command.

$ sudo yum install pandoc

Convert a Text File into a Word Document

If you want to apply any formatting to a text file, you can use Markdown syntax in the text. The following is an example of a text file written in Markdown syntax.

My Title
========

Sub-title
---------

This is a new paragraph.  Different paragraphs need to be separated by blank lines.

You can change the attributes of text as follows. *italic*, **bold**, `monospace`.

You can also include a [link](http://example.com).  Note that there must be no space between ] and (.

This is my friend list:

   * Cathy
   * Julia
   * Lisa

This is a numbered list:

   1. Google
   2. Facebook
   3. Apple

You can also include an image file by using the following format.

![alt text](/path/to/image.png "Title")

Once a text file is ready, run the following command to convert the text file into a Word document.

$ pandoc -o output.docx input.txt

This is the output of the generated Word document.

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