How to edit a Word document without Word

Step by step

1. Open the document

   Go to the Word editor, drop a .docx, .doc, .odt or .rtf and choose Edit file. It opens at its own page size and margins, with page breaks where the text reaches the bottom.

2. Edit the text

   Click and type. The format bar has the document’s own paragraph styles, its fonts and sizes, bold, italic, underline, colours, highlight, alignment, line spacing and lists. Find and replace… changes a word everywhere at once.

3. Tables, pictures and the page

   Insert a table adds one, with rows and columns added before or after, merged or shaded. Insert a picture places one, resized by its corner. Header and footer… and Page setup… set the header, footer, page numbers, paper and margins.

4. Settle tracked changes

   If someone edited with Track Changes on, their additions are underlined and deletions struck through. Accept all changes or Reject all changes settles them in one go.

5. Save it

   Press Download for a .docx with the same name. Open the arrow next to Download to save as PDF, OpenDocument text, Rich Text, plain text, Markdown or a web page instead.

Paragraphs and tables you didn’t edit keep their exact Word code, and every part Anyfile doesn’t read is copied unchanged, so the document goes back to its author looking as it did. A .doc from Word 97–2003 is saved as a .docx.

Some things are shown but not yet edited. Text boxes, shapes, charts, SmartArt and equations appear as placeholders and are kept as they are; comments and footnotes can be read but not changed; tracked changes are accepted or rejected all at once. Pages are laid out by the browser, so line and page breaks can fall a little differently from Word’s, and fonts you don’t have are shown in the closest match.

Nothing is uploaded: your browser reads the file and makes the new one on your device. See how it works, and how to check.

Other ways to do it

Word for the web. Free with a Microsoft account, and the closest to Word itself, comments and tracked changes included. The document is kept in OneDrive.

Google Docs. Opens .docx files from Google Drive and can edit them as Word files. It needs a Google account, and the file is uploaded.

LibreOffice Writer. Free for Windows, Mac and Linux, and handles nearly everything Word does, text boxes and comments included. It’s a large download.

Pages on a Mac. Opens Word documents and exports them back as .docx, though complex layouts can shift on the way.

When Anyfile is quicker

To fix a typo, fill in a name, update a date or finish a letter, the browser is quickest: nothing to install, no account, and the file stays on your device. For heavy editing with comments and text boxes, Word for the web or LibreOffice is the better tool.