Some historical documentations may use the DOC filename extension for plain-text file format. However, this specification does not describe all of the features used by DOC format and reverse engineered work remains necessary.
DOC format specification under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise. Sun Microsystems and reverse engineered the file format. The DOC format specification was available from Microsoft on request since 2006 under restrictive RAND-Z terms until February 2008. Specifications of later versions of Microsoft Office binary file formats were not publicly available.
Some specifications for Microsoft Office 97 binary file formats were published in 1997 under a restrictive license, but these specifications were removed from online download in 1999.
Specificationīecause the DOC file format was a closed specification for many years, inconsistent handling of the format persists and may cause some loss of formatting information when handling the same file with multiple word processing programs. Command line programs for Unix-like operating systems that can convert files from the DOC format to plain text or other standard formats include the wv library, which itself is used directly by AbiWord. Other word processors, such as Writer, IBM Lotus Symphony, Apple Pages and AbiWord, can also create and read DOC files, although with some limitations. The DOC format is native to Microsoft Word.