It was not initially popular, since its user interface was different from the leading word processor at the time, WordStar. Advertisements depicted the Microsoft Mouse and described Word as a WYSIWYG, windowed word processor with the ability to undo and display bold, italic, and underlined text, although it could not render fonts. Unlike most MS-DOS programs at the time, Microsoft Word was designed to be used with a mouse. That year Microsoft demonstrated Word running on Windows.
Free demonstration copies of the application were bundled with the November 1983 issue of PC World, making it the first to be distributed on-disk with a magazine. Its name was soon simplified to Microsoft Word. Microsoft announced Multi-Tool Word for Xenix and MS-DOS in 1983.
Simonyi started work on a word processor called Multi-Tool Word and soon hired Richard Brodie, a former Xerox intern, who became the primary software engineer. In 1981, Microsoft hired Charles Simonyi, the primary developer of Bravo, the first GUI word processor, which was developed at Xerox PARC. Main article: History of Microsoft Word Origins
Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS (1983), Apple Macintosh running the Classic Mac OS (1985), AT&T UNIX PC (1985), Atari ST (1988), OS/2 (1989), Microsoft Windows (1989), SCO Unix (1990), and macOS (2001).Ĭommercial versions of Word are licensed as a standalone product or as a component of Microsoft Office 365, or Microsoft 365 Premium subscription, Windows RT or the discontinued Microsoft Works suite. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems.
Microsoft Word 2007 Microsoft Word 2008 (MAC) OxygenOffice Professional (Linux) Word 2010Īpplication/ Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. Thus, the data can pass through corporate firewalls without hindrance. In addition, security concerns are drastically reduced because the information is stored in XML, which is essentially plain text. Users can also use standard transformations to extract or repurpose the data. The application does not need to be a Microsoft product it can be any application. Any application that supports XML can access and work with data in the new file format. DOCX extends what is possible with the binary files of earlier versions. However to open it using any Microsoft Word that predated 2007 would require DOCX to be converted into a normal doc format.ĭOCX Converter View other document file formatsĭOCX improves file and data management and data recovery. The benefit of having open XML is that it is able to be read by applications, platforms and Internet Platforms. More detailed information on doc files Free alternatives to Microsoft to open doc files Microsoft Office binary file format specifications DOC ConverterĭOCX was introduced with Microsoft Word 2007, it's based on open XML and uses ZIP compression for smaller file sizes. doc files can also contain mail merge information, which allows a word-processed template to be used in conjunction with a spreadsheet or database.ĪbiWord Apple Pages AppleWorks KWord Microsoft Word StarOffice As PC technology has grown the original uses for the extension have become less important and have largely disappeared from the PC world.ĭOC to DOCX - Convert file now View other document file formatsĮarly versions of the doc file format contained mostly formatted text, however development of the format has allowed doc files to contain a wide variety of embedded objects such as charts and tables from other applications as well as media such as videos, images, sounds and diagrams. It was in the 1990s that Microsoft chose the doc extension for their proprietary Microsoft Word processing formats. Almost everyone would have used the doc file format, whenever you write a letter, do some work or generally write on your PC you will use the doc file format. Historically, it was used for documentation in plain-text format, particularly of programs or computer hardware, on a wide range of operating systems. Doc (an abbreviation of document) is a file extension for word processing documents it is associated mainly with Microsoft and their Microsoft Word application.