| Word document is a proprietary format developed by Microsoft for its word processing software in 1983. It was used in Apple Mac, SCO Unix, OS/2 and Windows. It was called Multi-Tool Word. |
| The first Word version is released in 1989. Office suite is introduced in 1995. Since then, Word become a part of Microsoft Office. Microsoft has improved Word considerably in later versions. It also added support for many languages. Now, Word 2013 supports 106 languages: |
| Afrikaans | Cherokee | German | Kannada | Malay | Romanian | Tamil | Valencian |
| Albanian | Chinese | Greek | Kashmiri | Malayalam | Russian | Tatar | Venda |
| Amharic | Croatian | Gujarati | Kazakh | Maltese | Scottish Gaelic | Telugu | Vietnamese |
| Arabic | Czech | Hausa | Khmer | Maori | Serbian | Thai | Welsh |
| Armenian | Danish | Hebrew | Kiche | Marathi | Sesotho | Tibetan | Wolof |
| Assamese | Dari | Hindi | Kinyarwanda | Mongolian | Sindhi | Tigrinya | Xhosa |
| Azeri | Dutch | Hungarian | Kirghiz | Nepali | Sinhala | Tsonga | Yoruba |
| Basque | English | Icelandic | Konkani | Norwegian | Slovak | Tswana | Zulu |
| Belarusian | Estonian | Igbo | Korean | Oriya | Slovenian | Turkish | |
| Bengali | Filipino | Indonesian | Kurdish | Persian | Sorbian | Turkmen | |
| Bosnian | Finnish | Inuktitut | Latvian | Polish | Spanish | Ukrainian | |
| Bulgarian | French | Irish | Lithuanian | Portuguese | Swahili | Urdu | |
| Burmese | Galician | Italian | Luxembourgish | Punjabi | Swedish | Uyghur | |
| Catalan | Georgian | Japanese | Macedonian | Quechua | Tajik | Uzbek |
| GIRDAC PDF Converter supports 80 user interface languages. This makes it a global product. |
| Word Version | Release Year | Word Name | Features | |
| 1.0 | 1989 | Word for Windows 1.0 | Used in Windows 2.x | |
| 1.1 | 1990 | Word for Windows 1.1 | Used in Windows 3.x | |
| 1.2 | 1991 | Word for Windows 2.0 | Used in Windows 3.x | |
| 6.0 | 1993 | Word for Windows 6.0 | Used in Windows 3.x | |
| 7.0 | 1995 | Word 95 | included in Office 95 | |
| 8.0 | 1997 | Word 97 | included in Office 97 | |
| 9.0 | 2000 | Word 2000 | included in Office 2000 | |
| 10.0 | 2002 | Word 2002 | included in Office XP | |
| 11.0 | 2003 | Word 2003 | included in Office 2003 | |
| 12.0 | 2007 | Word 2007 | included in Office 2007 | |
| 14.0 | 2010 | Word 2010 | included in Office 2010 | |
| 15.0 | 2013 | Word 2013 | included in Office 2013 | |
| Rich Text Format (RTF) is one of the supported file formats in Word. RTF specification version 1.0 was first implemented in 1987. It is improved in later versions. The latest RTF specification version 1.9.1 is released in 2008. It is compatible with Word 2007. |
| RTF is an 8-bit format. However, it can render the characters beyond the 8-bit ASCII code. It maintains document structure with reference table and control codes. For instance, the word that follows the control code \b is shown as bold. |
| PDF is preferred format for cross-platform use and greater consistency. However, PDF files are not easily editable documents. RTF is a plain text file and easily editable. |
| Word document in Word 2007 can be saved in 12 formats: |
| File Extension | Description |
| .docx | supports open xml partially |
| .doc | compatible with Word 97 to Word 2003 |
| .docm | enables macros |
| .dotx | supports Word 2007 template |
| .dot | supports template compatible with Word 97 to Word 2003 |
| .dotm | enables macros in template |
| .mhtml | supports single page web file |
| .html | supports simple web file and filtered web file |
| .rtf | supports latest rtf specification |
| .txt | plain text file |
| .xml | supports Word xml |
| .wps | supports Works 6.0 to Works 9.0 |
| Word 2010 supports open xml partially. Word 2013 supports open xml completely. |
| Go to: What is PDF? |
| Word is not free software. But Word Viewer is free. One can download the Word Viewer 2007 by clicking this link. |
| Go to: What is PDF Converter? |
