$> abiword --to=rtf myworddocument.doc

##</code><code>##

$> perl extract-table-cells.pl myworddocument.rtf

##</code><code>##

[pseudo] 
 ...
 # table content part already extracted to $tablecontent
 @cells = $tablecontent =~ /} ([^}]*) }\\cell{/xgs;
 ...