How to use the DOCX viewer
- Drag a .docx file onto the drop zone, or click Choose files.
- The document opens as A4 or Letter pages on a gray workspace, much like Microsoft Word. Headers, footers, tables, images, bullets and footnotes are rendered too.
- Use the zoom buttons in the status bar at the bottom, or click the percentage to fit the page to the window again.
- Print / Save as PDF prints only the document area. Choose "Save as PDF" as the printer to create a PDF file.
- Copy all text puts the plain text, without formatting, on your clipboard so you can paste it into an email or chat.
This is handy when you receive a résumé template, a contract draft from an overseas partner or a class assignment as a DOCX file, and the computer in front of you has no Word license.
How DOCX files are rendered
A DOCX file is actually a ZIP archive. If you rename it to .zip and extract it, you will find XML files such as word/document.xml (the body), word/styles.xml (styles) and a word/media folder (images). This format is called Office Open XML (OOXML) and is published as the international standard ISO/IEC 29500.
The viewer uses the open-source docx-preview library (Apache-2.0) to do the following inside your browser:
- Unzip the file and read document.xml, styles.xml, numbering.xml and related parts
- Convert paragraph and character styles to CSS, and rebuild tables, lists and images as HTML
- Use the page size and margin settings (sectPr) to lay out pages that look like paper
When it may look different from Word
A browser rendering cannot match Word perfectly in every case.
- Fonts: if the fonts used in the document are not installed on your device, similar fonts are used instead, so line breaks and page counts can change.
- Complex objects: SmartArt, charts, equations (OMML) and overlapping text boxes may be simplified.
- Tracked changes: revisions and comments are shown as the final version.
If you need the exact print layout, ask the author for a PDF as well. For reading and simple printing, this viewer is enough.
Safe for company documents
Your document never leaves your browser. Unlike upload-based converters, no copy is left on an external server, and if the page is already open the viewer keeps working even when you go offline. Close the tab when you are done and the data is gone from memory.
Frequently asked questions
Can I open old DOC files?
This viewer supports DOCX, the format used since Word 2007. The older binary .doc format (Word 97-2003) is not supported. Save the file as DOCX in Word or LibreOffice and open it again.
Can I convert DOCX to PDF?
Yes. Open the document, click Print / Save as PDF and choose Save as PDF as the printer. The print styles are tuned so only the document is printed.
The fonts look different from the original.
When the fonts used in a document are not installed on your device, substitute fonts are used. The content is the same; install the fonts or ask for a PDF if the exact look matters.
Is there a file size limit?
There is no server limit because nothing is uploaded, but very large documents with many images may be slow depending on your device's memory.