How to convert binary ms word doc into text so I can splunk it?

[maverick]

I currently have some medical records in doc form that are binary text created in ms office word.

I want to create dates, times, doctor, patient visits into charts for the doctors within a dashboard in Splunk.

Is there a way that I can convert my binary document into a text based document so I can splunk it?

Is this possible?

[lguinn2]

It would be trivial to write a Microsoft VBA macro that simply re-saved a file with the same name, but in Unicode text format with a .txt extension. In fact, here it is

Public Sub SaveAsUnicodeFile()
    Dim newName As String
    Dim pos As Integer  
    pos = InStrRev(ActiveDocument.Name, ".")
    If pos > 0 Then
        newName = Left$(ActiveDocument.Name, pos - 1)
    Else
        newName = ActiveDocument.Name
    End If
    newName = ActiveDocument.Path & "\" & newName & ".txt"  
    Call ActiveDocument.SaveAs(FileName:=newName, FileFormat:=wdFormatUnicodeText)
End Sub

This version of the macro re-saves the active document, but you could change it so that the name of the file to save was supplied as an argument...

[yannK]

What about exporting to RTF ?

[maverick]

Not sure if this is what you are asking for, but it appears to me to be worth trying:

http://www.cometdocs.com/