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What Are DOCX And DOC Files?

A general explanation of DOCX files

Let’s have a look at a full description of DOCX files. DOCX is a special file which has been created by using Microsoft Word. You can create DOCX files using other Word Processing applications and programs such as Apple Pages and OpenOffice. As a rule, DOCX documents include a formatted text. Also, such files might include various document elements, such as drawn elements and images. When it comes to business, academic, or home environments, DOCX files are very common for drafting invitations, letters, newsletters, resumes and other kinds of documents.

There is a difference between DOCX and DOC files. DOCX files do not store the data of the document in a single binary file. They are made using the file format Open XML. All documents are stored as a separate collection of folders and files in a compressed package Zip. When we speak about DOCX file we mean the main file XML and three folders which are “docProps”, “Word”, and “_rels”. These folders store all the properties of the document, its content and any kind of relationships between your files. This is a well-designed file structure in order to make the content of your document as accessible as possible.

Let’s say, you have just saved your text-based document using Plain Text file. All images of your document are kept within DOCX file as separate images. DOCX files usually include authorship data, various review notes and some information regarding formatting. You can open DOCX by Microsoft Word programs for Windows starting from Microsoft Word 2007. You can open DOCX by Microsoft Word programs for Mac OS X starting from Microsoft Word 2008. It is also possible to open DOCX files with fresh versions of Microsoft Word for both Windows and Mac using the document support Open XML

It is important to mention that you can explore the content of DOCX files in a manual way. You will just have to rename the extension DOCX to ZIP. Then you will need to get the resulting of your file decompressed with any decompression utility ZIP. Microsoft Word names new DOCX documents as “Document1.docx”.

A general explanation of DOC files

Microsoft Word creates so-called word processing documents known as DOC files. The same file extension is common for such word-processing programs such as Apple Pages and OpenOffice Writer. Such files contain various charts, formatting text content, graphs, page formatting, tables, images, and print settings.

If you want to make such documents as invitations, letters, essays, resumes, DOC files are the best for such purposes. Every time when you start creating a new document in Microsoft Word, you can save your documents in the file format DOC. Storing your text-based content is very convenient in DOC format. Any time your file can be opened and edited again. Once the editing of your DOC file is complete, you can save it as DOT or PDF and print the document easily. It goes without saying Microsoft Word is one of the leading word processing apps all around the world. Millions of people use it in business, academic, and home environment.

However, even DOC and DOCX files extensions may cause some problems. If you can’t open your files for some reasons, we highly recommend you to check out the following trustworthy websites: