How to use the extract text from word (docx)
- Choose a .docx file or drop it on the box. Files up to 25 MB are accepted. The file is read on your device and is never uploaded.
- The text appears at once in the box below, with counts for words, characters and lines. Change the options to include headers and footers, footnotes and endnotes, or to start list items with a dash.
- Press Copy text to put the text on your clipboard or Download .txt to save it as a plain text file named after your document.
- If the box says the file is not a .docx file, open the document in Word or another editor, choose Save As, pick the Word Document (.docx) format and try the new copy.
A short document and what comes out
Take a document with the paragraph "Hello world & co", a list item "Item one", a line with the letters A, a tab, B, a line break and C, and a table with two rows. The extracted text keeps each paragraph on its own line, turns the tab into a tab character and keeps the line break, so you get A, a tab, B, a new line and C.
Each table row becomes one line with the cells separated by tab characters. If the second cell of the first row holds two paragraphs, they are joined with a space, so the row reads R1C1, a tab, then "R1C2 second para". That layout pastes neatly into a spreadsheet.
What is inside a .docx file
A .docx file is a ZIP archive of XML parts. The body of the document lives in a part named word/document.xml, headers and footers have their own parts, and footnotes and endnotes are kept in two more. This tool opens the archive, finds those parts, and reads only the text runs inside them.
Because the XML is read as text and the result is shown in a plain text box, nothing inside the document can run or change this page. Angle brackets in your text stay angle brackets, and special entity definitions are not expanded.
What is left out
Formatting is not kept: bold, italics, fonts, colors and styles are dropped. Pictures, charts, text boxes, comments and the text of tracked deletions are skipped, and so are field codes such as page number instructions, although the value a field currently shows is kept. Numbered list numbers are generated by Word at display time and are not stored as text, so list items come out without their numbers, with an optional dash in front.
For a PDF instead of a Word file, use the PDF to text extractor. To count the words in the result, paste it into the word counter, and to tidy the lines use the text line tools.
Older Word files and protected files
Files that end in .doc use an older binary format, and password protected Word files are stored in a different wrapper. Neither is a ZIP archive, so this tool cannot read them and says so. It does not try to guess or remove passwords.
Assumptions and limits
- Only text stored in the main document, and optionally in headers, footers, footnotes and endnotes, is extracted. Text inside images is not read.
- Line breaks follow Word paragraphs. A soft line break inside a paragraph is kept as a new line in the output.
- The word count splits on whitespace, so it can differ by a few words from the count Word shows for the same file.
- Very large documents show the first 1,000,000 characters in the box; the downloaded file has everything.
Frequently asked questions
Can I get the text out of a Word file without installing Word?
Yes. Choose the .docx file here and the plain text appears in your browser. No program is needed and the document is not sent to any server.
Why are the numbers of my numbered list missing?
Word works out list numbers when it draws the page and does not save them as text in the file. The tool can put a dash in front of each list item so the structure is still visible.
Does this work on a .doc file?
No. A .doc file is an older binary format. Open it in a word processor, save a copy as .docx, and then choose that copy here.
Is the formatting of my table kept?
The cell text is kept. Each row becomes one line and the cells are separated by tab characters, which most spreadsheets split into columns when you paste.