We all know about the .doc file formats. After all, nearly all of us have Microsoft Word installed in our computers! The .doc extension files are the Microsoft Word files which are called the word processing documents. Microsoft Word is the premier word processing tool used by the Windows, created by Microsoft Corporation, and is a part of Microsoft Office. The .doc files are the document files which contain texts, images, graphs, charts, tables, page formatting features, print features etc. In addition to his, the feature of sharing and emailing of the document is also available with Microsoft Word. These files come in the category of the Microsoft Word Binary File Formats.
So, how do you create this type of file format?
The Microsoft Word Binary DOC generally contain more amount of information regarding the text information as compared to certain other document file formats such as the Rich Text Format and the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). The .doc files are compatible with the Microsoft Office Version 2003 or below only. For the upgraded versions, i.e. versions 2007 and above, the file extension .docx is used in the form of the XML documents.
The DOC was earlier used by some historical documentation programs. They used this format for the plain-text file uses. In addition to this, this file extension was also used by the primitive versions of WordPerfect for its basic formats. There are some other types of softwares also which use this type of file extension. For example, for the Palm Operating System, the DOC .doc is used as a shorthand for the PalmDoc files which can encode text documents like eBooks.
There are various programs from other different operating systems which can convert the files with the DOC into other file formats of the plain text documents. The nature of the .doc files is very proprietary and thus, a large amount of data is lost during the process of conversion or if an attempt is made to open such files from some other word processing program.
Of course, Microsoft Word is the best program to access these files. The other applications which are related to the files of .doc extension are BIFF file, DeskMate Document, DisplayWrite 4 File program, ASCII text file, FrameMaker by Adobe Systems Inc., Interleaf Document and Mastercam Material File by CNC Software Inc.
Open DOC File on Windows OS
- Look for an DOC file you need to open in Windows Explorer and double-click on it
- If the file doesn’t open automatically and you see a “Windows can’t open a file” message then you should search for a program which can open DOC file
- If you have a program which can open DOC file installed on your computer then launch that program and select “File” and then “Open” or similar options from its menu to open the DOC file
- If you don’t have the program installed then you need to try searching for “DOC wiki”, “how to open DOC file” in the search engine.
- Once you find the application, install it on your computer
- After the program is installed double-click on the DOC file to open it
File extensions are used by Windows operating system to specify what kind of information is stored in the file. Every file in Windows OS needs to have file extension and file extensions are used by Windows to determine which application it should use to open the file. Every application installed on Windows OS places information about which extensions it could open into the Windows registry and Windows uses this information to determine which application it should launch when user double-clicks on the file. If application which can open DOC file is not installed, then Windows will show ‘Windows can’t open DOC file’ message and buttons to either select an application on the computer which can open the file or to search the web for the application which can open DOC file.