Beginning with Office 2007, Microsoft unveiled a new file format, called Open XML, which uses the .docx extension—but isn't compatible with older versions of Office without some assistance.

A DOCX file is a file created in Word 2007 or Word 2010. Before using this free viewer to open a DOCX file, you must perform a few more steps to get Windows XP ready to use the tool.

How to Open a DOCX Online. Microsoft introduced the DOCX format, which ends with the extension .docx, in 2007 as an upgrade to its popular word-processing program, Word. DOCX files ...

“If you rename a .docx file to .zip you can open it,” tweets SwiftOnSecurity, the security professional/Taylor Swift parody account. Then you can grab images and video that were embedded in ...

While admittedly it’s not as simple as it is on macOS to open a .docx file using Pages, here's how to open, edit and even re-export .pages files on a Windows PC.

Option #2: If you’re a Firefox user, install the OpenXML Viewer extension, which lets you open Word 2007 files right in your browser with all the formatting and layout preserved.

Designed for use with Office 2000, XP, and 2003, the downloadable add-on allows you to open, edit, and save the newer file formats, seamlessly converting the files on the fly and in the background.

Those files have a “.docx” extension. Windows knows exactly what this is but, if you don’t have Microsoft Word installed, the operating system doesn’t know what program to open the file with.

If you open the file online, Microsoft 365 will open it on the desktop by default, so you can skip the manual process without worry. To set this default setting, follow these steps.