Read DOCX Files in Internet Explorer with Microsoft Word

word docx reader Question: How do you quickly read a docx document on some computer that has no Microsoft Office Word 2007 and is neither connected to the Internet (online conversion is therefore ruled out).

Solution: No worries, you can make a docx reader out of Internet Explorer or any other text editor (like notepad) - just follow these steps:

Step 1: Change the file extension of your docx file to .zip (hello.docx -> hello.zip)

Step 2: Extract the contents of this zip file locally using Winzip or any other unzip utility.

docx-readerStep 3: Open the “word” folder in the extracted files and you should see a file called document.xml.

Open document.xml inside Internet Explorer and there you have the full text of your docx document.

If there are any images or charts, they’ll be available under a sub-folder called media.

Though you get to read the text without formatting, it’s still a useful technique to know.

Related: Download Word 2007 Viewer for DOCX

Amit Agarwal is a web geek, solo entrepreneur and loves making things on the Internet. Google recently awarded him the Google Developer Expert and Google Cloud Champion title for his work on Google Workspace and Google Apps Script.

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