Understanding .docx
As indicated earlier, Word’s new .docx format doesn’t itself use XML format. Rather, the main body of your document is stored in XML format, but that file isn’t stored directly on disk. Instead, it’s stored inside a ZIP file, which gets a .docx, .docm, dotm, or dotx file extension.
To verify this, create a simple Word 2007 file, and save and close it. Next, rename it to add a .zip extension. Finally, use Windows Explorer to display the contents of that ZIP file, as shown in Figure 4-14.
Figure 4-14. When viewed as a ZIP file, most .docx files contain three main folders and a Content Types XML document.
Word .docx files can contain additional folders as well, such as one named customXml. This folder would be used if the document contains content control features that are linked to document properties, an external database or forms server, etc.
The main parts of the Word document are inside the folder named word. A typical word folder for a simple document appears in Figure 4-15.
Figure 4-15. The Word document’s main components are stored inside the .docx file in the folder named “word.”
The main text of the document is stored in document.xml. Using an XML editor, you could actually make changes to the text in document.xml, replace the original file with the changed one, rename the file so that it has a .docx extension instead of .zip, and open the file in Word, and those changes would appear.
Quick Q&A
| Q: | What’s an XML editor? When I double-click on an XML file, it just opens Internet Explorer, which doesn’t let me edit anything. |
| A. | There are specialized XML editors. You can also use a Web site builder like FrontPage or SharePoint Designer. You can also use anything that edits plain text files, such as Notepad. |
More complex Word files contain additional elements. Shown in Figure 4-16 is an expanded folder view of a .docx file that contains clip art, an embedded Excel chart, several pictures, some SmartArt, as well as custom XML links to document properties.
Tip
You can replace the images in a .docx file without editing the file in Word. Rename the .docx file so that it has a .zip extension. Extract the images stored in the wordmedia folder so you can see what’s what. Give the replacement images the same respective names as the existing ones. Replace the contents of the wordmedia folder with the new images. Finally, replace the .zip extension with the original extension. Presto! And you never touched Word! This might not make ergonomic sense for just a few images, but if you have dozens it could save you a substantial amount of time.