Filed under: Software
Opening .docx files on your Mac
Docx. It's the new XML format for Microsoft Word. And it's incompatible with your Mac. Docx files may already be appearing in your mailbox. With deadlines and angry people sending them to you, who really just need to relax and take a vacation in the Bahamas and send you less work to do.
If you're on a Mac and you've got to deal with docx files, EightySevenFour has a great tutorial up on how to recover the text from the file.
Yes, it's more than a bit of a hack--it involves unzipping the file and stripping the text from it--but it may save your butt until a better solution comes along.
I personally haven't had the opportuntity to play with docx, but I strongly suspect that TextEdit may be able to handle the XML better than you might first think.
Do you have some DocX files around. Want to help out? Send one over to our Tips form so I can try to hack away at it myself. Thanks!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jason said 7:07PM on 12-05-2006
With all the fuss over this today, the MacBU team at Microsoft has posted a response to their Macmojo blog. It was about two hours ago - give it a read. Gives a better idea of their thinking and circumstances.
http://blogs.msdn.com/macmojo/archive/2006/12/06/converters-coming-free-and-fairly-fast.aspx
Now would everyone calm down?
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meatmcguffin said 7:31PM on 12-05-2006
Would 'File Juicer' work on these files?
Saved my arse several times before i got hold of iWork
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Jamie Flanagan said 8:30PM on 12-05-2006
The word processor Mellel 2.1.2 has changed over to an XML format from its previous proprietary one. Anyone know if it can read the Word .docx version? The Mellel files seem to have a similar format. But I haven't gotten any Word 2007 files sent to me yet.
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Greg Terry said 11:24PM on 12-05-2006
Jamie:
I doubt it. Open Office has been using an XML file format for some time as well and it is not compatible with the M$ format. Supposedly, they will get that coded in sometime after the first of the year - probably before the M$ hack.
When has M$ ever made anything that would work with an established standard? They alwasy have to muddy the waters to muscle their own advantage.
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rong said 9:43PM on 12-05-2006
How can Microsoft call it an open XML format? Christe!
I ask this question in complete disgust knowing full-well that this is the Microsoft way; they see a standard... that infiltrate it and destroy that which makes the standard so great.
I can't wait for Apple to release something even halfway resembling Excel. Ram it down Microsoft's throat.
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rong said 9:37PM on 12-05-2006
How can Microsoft call it an open XML format? Christe!
I ask this question in complete disgust knowing full-well that this is the Microsoft way; they see a standard... that infiltrate it and destroy that which makes the standard so great.
I can't wait for Apple to release something even halfway resembling Excel. Ram it down Microsoft's throat.
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rong said 9:53PM on 12-05-2006
And what is with this stupid crap they are trying to pull by releasing a plug-in for browsers called "Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere" (WPF/E).
They are losing the browser war again so now they have to beef up their efforts?!?!
What the heck does "rich content in addition to HTML" mean? Nothing!
Somebody want $10... tell me how this will benefit anyone.
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rong said 10:04PM on 12-05-2006
While I'm complaining... what's with this lame-commenting system. I posted 2 comments in a row; I replied to the first, then go back to write another comment, then replied to that and I see that it posted the first comment twice. Then I had to go back and retype the last comment only upon going to my e-mail account I see that by this time I had 3 messages total at this point. After typing this and also the second message a second time, I had 5 responses from your server total just to get those original 2 comments out of my head and onto the net.
Uggg. This is proving as difficult to work with as Microsoft is.
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MahRain said 3:13AM on 12-06-2006
A similar 'hack' can be used by Windows (Linux, *nix) users who stumble across a .Pages file which is also XML.
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Pilster said 8:49AM on 12-06-2006
Sample files to play with available here.
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Pilster said 8:51AM on 12-06-2006
Oops.
Here.
http://openxmldeveloper.org/articles/OpenXMLsamples.aspx
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Jay said 12:56PM on 12-06-2006
Just released is "Docx Converter", to which you upload your .docx file and it converts it for you to .txt. The formatting disappears, but the text remains.
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canna said 6:27AM on 12-20-2006
today Panergy-software released docXConverter for MAC OS X, which convert docx to rtf. the quality of conversion is awesome, take a look at the screenshots.
you can download the trial for docXConverter from here:
http://www.panergy-software.com/buy/download.html
but the demo is good only for 20 conversions after that you have to buy it.
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Dag said 3:21PM on 2-07-2007
docx2doc allows you to convert Word 2007 files in a simple and fast 1-2-3 process. Upload, choose target format (including doc, html, rtf and txt) and have your docs ready in 30 seconds!
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