How to detect merged cells when reading tables

Hello, I’ve created a simple .docx document (Word 2010) with a simple 2x2 table, the 1st col is merged as with:

+---+---+
|   | b |
+ a +---+
|   | c |
+---+---+

When reading this with python the cells (0,0) and (1,0) are different! How can I detect that they are merged on the original document? The text of both cell is indeed ‘a’. But the ‘pointer’ are different. Thanks Python 2.7, docx 0.85

[oltish]

It has been a while, but someone else may need this information in future.

As mentioned in previous comment, docx.table._Cell object has property _tc which contains useful information about cell’s span:

from docx import Document
doc=Document("simple.docx")
table=doc.tables[0]

c=table.cell(0,0)
print(c.text, c._tc.top, c._tc.bottom, c._tc.left, c._tc.right)

c=table.cell(0,1)
print(c.text, c._tc.top, c._tc.bottom, c._tc.left, c._tc.right)

c=table.cell(1,1)
print(c.text, c._tc.top, c._tc.bottom, c._tc.left, c._tc.right)

The output will be:

a 0 2 0 1
b 0 1 1 2
c 1 2 1 2

From this you will easily understand not only if the cell is merged or not, but also its shape and size.

[sylvain-bougnoux]

I’ve found a workaround (though the doc does not stand). With the above table in simple.docx

from docx import Document
doc=Document("simple.docx")
table=doc.tables[0]
c00=table.cell(0,0)
c10=table.cell(1,0)
c00==c01  # is false as reported
#however
c00._tc==c01._tc # is true

Regards