Why does Microsoft provide different file types to save a Word document?

Shayna: Why does Microsoft provide different file types to save a Word document?
I just would like to know why Microsoft has so many different file types to save Word documents?

Answers and Views:

Answer by M.I.
because some websites do not allow some formats to be uploaded or emailed to them. and if they were to make it only a word format, that would show a monopoly of some sorts. At that point people would start to stray away from using word because not EVERYONE has microsoft word.

Answer by bookfiend
I think part of it depends on what you want to do with the file. Do you want to share it with someone who has an older system? Then they need one type. Do you want to share it online so that no one can change it? Then it may take another. Do you want to use HTML codes with it? Yet another type.

Try doing a search on the different types listed. You should get definitions that spell out the differences.

Answer by kingkurry
Because not all people(believe it or not) have microsoft word. Also not all programs are compatible with microsoft word. Microsoft gives you so many options to save as different formats so you document is compatible with practically everything. For example, if you need to send a word document to a teacher, but your teacher doesnt have microsoft word, you just save it as a .txt. file or an .rtf file (both of which any pc can open) and that way your teacher can still open it. Or maybe if you wanted to upload a file to the web, and it only supports a certain format, you just save it as that format.

Some formats, however dont have as many formatting options as word does. Like if your word document has a lot of tables in it, and you convert it into .txt, you will loose the tables because there isnt any possible coding for tables in the txt format. The rtf format does have tables however. Also if you had a picture or chart from word, you would loose them if you chose to save as a txt or rtf file.

You got it now? just allowing you to save your documents in word format would make all your documents incompatible with other computers. And microsoft just cant make all their documents save to a universal format like txt or rtf because they offer minimal formating options. If you were using one of those file types, you would not be able to create tabe, add charts, or insert pictures into your documents.

hope this helps 🙂

Answer by The Phlebob
A Word .doc or .docx document, in fact, in any word processor document, contains not only the text you typed in, but all the information necessary to format that text into sentences, paragraphs, headers, footers, and everything else you want to make it look better than a simple text paragraph such as this one.

Trouble is, different word processors, even older versions of Word, do all that different ways. All those types, .doc, .docx, .rtf, .txt, are only the external distinction between the documents. The real differences are inside. If Word produced only .docx files, only other copies of Word could read them. To anybody with a different word processor that didn’t know how to handle .docx documents, the documents would be sheer junk.

Hope that helps.

Answer by MK
To make it easier depending on the purpose of the document. You dont need all the metadata if you only use the text, for instance, etc.