DOCX to Text
Convert a .docx to text and keep only the words, with Word's fonts and spacing left behind. Copy the result or save a .txt that keeps the document's name.
Word file
Drop a .docx here
Word 2007 and later · one file at a time · nothing is uploaded
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What the document carries
Structure
Converted
How to use
- Drop your .docx on the Word file box, or use Choose file. The text appears straight away.
- Read the list of what the document carries, which names what plain text could not keep.
- Switch on Keep list markers or Tables as rows if the structure should survive as characters.
- Take the text away with Copy text, or download it as a .txt named after the document.
- If the flattening went too far, the same document opens in DOCX to Markdown or DOCX to HTML with its structure intact.
About this tool
Word documents carry a lot of baggage. Paste one straight into a CMS box or an email and the fonts and the odd spacing come with it, and then you're cleaning up by hand. Converting the .docx to text throws the styling away and hands back the words. Drop the file in and the document is in the box below as plain blocks of text, before you've reached for a button.
Mammoth reads the document's structure, and the text is written from that: one block per heading, paragraph, list item or table cell, with a single blank line between blocks. A line break Word drew inside a paragraph stays a line break, footnotes are appended under the text, and tabs inside a paragraph survive, which keeps a hand-aligned column list readable in a monospaced editor. Above the text, a list of what the document carries says what plain text did to each part — the links that kept their words and lost their addresses, the pictures that had no words to keep, and the header and footer Mammoth never opens.
I built this for the moment you need words somewhere plain: a code comment, a text editor, a form that mangles rich paste. If the structure matters, DOCX to Markdown keeps headings and lists as markup, and DOCX to HTML keeps them as tags. Both take the same file.
One file, start to finish
Say the file is q3-notes.docx: a title, a few paragraphs, a five-item list and a three-by-three table. Drop it and the box fills at once. The list arrives as five bare lines and the table as nine single-cell blocks, left to right and then down, and the figure under the box counts the blocks and the words.
Turn on Keep list markers and the lines gain their hyphens and numbers. Turn on Tables as rows and the nine blocks become three lines with tabs between the cells, ready to paste into a spreadsheet. Copy text puts exactly what is in the box on the clipboard; the download saves it as q3-notes.txt.
Good to know
- Only the modern .docx opens here. A Word 97-2003 .doc is a different, binary format, and its first bytes are checked as the file lands, so an old one is refused with a note telling you to re-save it. Everything visual is gone by design: images and colours drop out, bold and headings flatten into ordinary words, and a link keeps its text while the URL disappears.
- Headers, footers and comments live outside the main text, and Mammoth does not read them. The list above the text names the header and footer wording it found, and that part has to be copied by hand. Footnotes are kept, appended under the text in Word's order.
Frequently asked questions
Do the bullet points survive?
The words always do. The markers are off by default, because Word keeps list numbering as a property of the paragraph rather than as characters. Turn on Keep list markers and bullets come back as hyphens, numbered lists as 1. 2. 3., with nested items indented.
It won't take my .doc file. What do I do?
Open it in Word, Google Docs or LibreOffice and use Save As to make a .docx, then bring that back here. A .doc from Word 97-2003 uses an old binary format with none of the XML underneath that a browser can read.
What happens to a table?
By default each cell's text comes through as its own block, across the row and then down. Turn on Tables as rows and each row becomes one line with its cells separated by tabs, which pastes into a spreadsheet as columns.
Why is there a blank line between every paragraph?
That is how a block boundary is marked, and it keeps the output readable. Stacking is what gets removed: empty paragraphs from hammering Enter collapse, and trailing spaces at the end of a line are trimmed. A line break inside a paragraph stays a single line break.
Can I get a word count from the text?
The figure under the text counts its blocks and words, and the line below it the characters. For sentences and reading time, paste it into the Word & Character Counter.
Does the .txt keep the name of my document?
Yes. contract-v3.docx downloads as contract-v3.txt, so a folder of converted files still lines up with the originals.
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