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DOCX to TXT Converter

Our free DOCX to TXT converter turns a Word document into clean plain text right in your browser. Upload a .docx file and get the words out — paragraph breaks kept, tables flattened into reading order, and nothing else — then copy the text or download it as a real .txt file. No upload, no sign-up, and no watermark. Your document never leaves your device.

How it works

A .docx file is not a single block of text — it is a ZIP archive wearing a document's name. Inside that archive are many small files: one holds the styles, one holds the settings, and one, word/document.xml, holds the actual words. Each paragraph in the document is wrapped in a <w:p> element, and each run of text inside it — a stretch of words with the same formatting — is wrapped in a <w:t> element. This converter unzips your file in your browser, reads that XML file, and joins the text runs back into plain text, one paragraph per line.

The unzipping is done with JSZip, a small library that runs entirely in your browser and is loaded from this site, not from a content network. If that library ever fails to load, the converter falls back to a built-in ZIP reader that uses your browser's own DecompressionStream support, so the tool still works. Either way, the file is read from your device's memory and never sent anywhere. The converter checks the file first: it must end in .docx and start with the ZIP signature, the letters PK. A PDF, a JPG, or an old binary .doc file is rejected with a friendly message instead of producing a broken download.

Paragraphs are the backbone of the output. Every <w:p> element becomes one line, so headings, body paragraphs, and list items stay on separate lines in the same order they appear in the document. A line break inside a paragraph, the kind you get with Shift+Enter, becomes a line break in the text too, and a tab inside a paragraph stays a tab. If you choose blank-line spacing, an empty line is added between paragraphs, which reads better when the text is long. The "remove extra blank lines" option collapses runs of empty lines into a single one, which tidies up documents that use blank paragraphs for spacing.

Tables are flattened, because plain text has no grid. The text in each cell comes out in reading order — across the row, then down to the next row — with one cell per line, so no words are lost and the order still makes sense. Formatting is not kept, because plain text has no formatting: bold, italics, font sizes, colors, and underlining are all dropped, and only the words remain. Images are not text, so they are left out entirely. Headers and footers, such as a page number or a running title, are also left out, so the text you get is the body of the document only.

When the text is ready, the tool reports how many paragraphs, words, and characters it found, and the size of the text. Copy it straight into an email, a form, or a notes app, or download it as a .txt file. The download is named after your document by default — report.docx becomes report.txt — or you can type your own name. Because everything happens on your device, the tool works the same on a phone, a tablet, or a computer, and a large document of several hundred pages converts in seconds.

Worked example

Suppose you have a short Word document with two paragraphs:

Paragraph 1: Hello World
Paragraph 2: Second line

Step 1: click the drop zone and choose the .docx file, or drag the file onto it. The tool shows the file name and size, and reads it right away.
Step 2: leave the spacing on "One line per paragraph" and click Extract text. The tool unzips the file, finds word/document.xml, and reads the two <w:p> elements.
Step 3: the output is exactly this:

Hello World
Second line

The page reports 2 paragraphs, 4 words, and 23 characters. Switch the spacing to "Blank line between paragraphs" and extract again, and the output becomes Hello World, an empty line, then Second line. Now try a document with a table. A two-cell row holding "Name" and "Alice" flattens to two lines, Name then Alice, in reading order — the words are all there, just without the grid. And if you upload a file that is not a .docx — say a .pdf or an old .doc — the tool stops and tells you plainly that it needs a .docx file, instead of handing you a broken text file.

If the extracted text looks like one long run with no breaks, your document probably uses line breaks instead of paragraphs; switch the spacing option and the breaks will show. If a paragraph is missing, check whether it lives in a header, a footer, or a text box — those are not part of the document body, so they are not extracted.

FAQ