DOC files are very popular and are mostly associated with documents that are generated through Microsoft Word. Aside from Microsoft Word, there are other word processing programs that use the DOC file extension to denote a document but some of them aren’t as prevalent as MS Word.
Microsoft Word however isn’t the original user of the DOC file extension, Word Perfect was. Word Perfect is a word processing program that was widely used and was rather very popular during the 80’s. Microsoft Word however has somewhat made the DOC file extension exclusively theirs and thus the file extension has become the most broadly recognized file format for word processed files or documents.
In the earlier versions of DOC file extension, files mostly contained formatted text. In the modern days however, DOC files can now contain embedded objects like tables and charts as well as various forms of media like images, sounds, videos, charts and diagrams. DOC files can even contain mail merge information that allows integration with a spreadsheet and/or a database.
Obviously, the best program to use to open a DOC file is Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org. Users can use Windows Wordpad but expectedly, the formatting and the support for embedded objects and media is definitely limited. But of course there are so many word processing programs as well that can view and modify a DOC file though some may have limited functionalities and capabilities. Below is the list of some of these programs:
| Mac OS | Microsoft Word 2011
Apple Pages Apple AppleWorks OpenOffice.org Planamesa NeoOffice Nuance OmniPage Pro X |
| Windows | Microsoft Word 2010
Microsoft Word Viewer Microsoft Works OpenOffice.org Nuance OmniPage 18 |
| Linux | OpenOffice.org |
