What Is DOCX File and How To Open, Edit and Convert DOCX?

DOC or DOCX is a documenting format developed by Microsoft. DOC and DOCX formats are mainly used in the Microsoft Office Word application. DOCX is the newer and enhanced version of the DOC format. DOC and DOCX documents contain text, images, shapes, styles, graphics, animations, videos, and page formatting. After Microsoft Word 2003 DOC format became open where before that it was a proprietary format. After Microsoft Word 2007 the default format and extension become DOCX where before that DOC was the default format and extension.

Structure Of DOCX

DOCX is a compressed file that contains data in different formats like XML, Image, Binary, etc. We can see the content of a DOCX file. We can extract a DOCX file with the 7zip program. We have the following DOCX document etc.

When we extract this file we will see the following files and folders.

_rels provides information about this DOCX file locations
customXml
docProps
word contains most of the information about DOCX file like fonts, media, theme, footnotes, etc.
[Content_Types] provides information about types of media inside the DOCX file

Edit DOCX File

We can edit DOCX file with an office application. As DOCX is very popular format there are a lot of office applications for different platforms like Windows, MacOSX, Linux etc.

Windows

File Viewer Plus
Microsoft Word
Corel WordPerfect X9
Apache OpenOffice
Hamcom ThinkFree Office
SoftMaker Office
Kingsoft Writer
LibreOffice
Google Drive
Microsoft One Drive

MacOSX

Microsoft Word
Apple Pages
Planamesa NeoOffice
Apache OpenOffice
Hancom ThinkFree
LibreOffice
Apple Preview
Google Drive
Microsoft One Drive

LEARN MORE What Is A PDF (Portable Document Format) File and How To Open PDF?

Linux

Apache OpenOffice
Hamcom ThinkFree Office
LibreOffice
Google Drive
Microsoft One Drive

Web Based

Google Drive
Microsoft One Drive

IOS

Microsoft Word
Apple Pages
Infraware Polaris Office
MobiSystem Office
Google Drive
Microsoft One Drive

Android

Microsoft Word
SoftMaker Office
Kingsoft WPS Office
Infraware Polaris Office
Google Drive
MobiSystems OfficeSuite
Microsoft One Drive

Free Light DOC and DOCX Viewers

In this part, we will use Free Viewer Lite applications which is a free program which can open and view Microsoft Word DOC and DOCX files. This application also opens and view PDF, Excel and Video Files. Download Free Viewer Lite from the following link and install with classical Windows Next->Next

https://objects.liquidweb.services/fvp/fvl_setup_141105u.exe

We can also use WordPad which is provided by Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Convert DOC and DOCX Formats

We can change the DOCX format into other formats like DOX, ODT, DOTX, TXT, RTF, MHT. We will use Microsoft Word which provides extensive convert options. We will click Export->Change Format-> …