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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Jack Schofield

Ways to read Office 2007's docx files

I tried your solution for reading a Microsoft Office 2007 docx file. I changed the file name to filename.docx.zip and unzipped it. When I double-clicked document.xml to open it in Internet Explorer, it displayed it in raw XML format, not in text. What do I need to do?
Mandywr

XML is a text format, so you can read the text, though I agree the tags and formatting can make this difficult. Newer and better alternatives are to use Zamzar.com to convert the docx file into something you want, or to use NativeWinds' Docx2Rtf. This free program does a great job of converting docx files into Rich Text Format (rtf), and it also converts .wps (Microsoft Works) and .odt (OpenOffice) files.

Of course, if you have Microsoft Office 2000, XP or 2003, you can download the free Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack. This enables old versions of Office to read and write the new formats.

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