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DOC file format

Extension.doc
Categorydocuments
Programs
Microsoft Word
OpenOffice.org Writer
IBM Lotus Symphony
Apple Pages
AbiWord
Main programMicrosoft Word
Description.doc The .doc format is a proprietary document file format used by Microsoft Word, primarily in versions before Word 007. It's a binary file format for text documents that may contain rich text content, images, tables, graphs, and other elements typical of word processing documentsThe .doc format was widely used for creating and sharing documents in business and academic settings. However, it has largely been supplanted by the .docx format in more recent versions of Microsoft Word.
Technical detailsThe `.doc` format, closely tied to Microsoft Word, was a preeminent word processing standard before the `.docx` format emerged in Office 2007. It was a proprietary binary format, making its structure inaccessible for third-party software development. The format includes binary codes for displaying text, images, and formatting in Word. It comprises text, formatting details, images, and other elements, supporting various text formats. Despite being associated with Word, other processors like OpenOffice also support it, albeit with compatibility variations across different Word versions. The `.docx` format, introduced later, is based on Office Open XML, offering more efficiency with XML and ZIP compression. However, modern Word versions maintain support for `.doc` for backward compatibility, highlighting its lasting impact and relevance in digital word processing.
MIME type
application/msword
application/kswps