this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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Can I edit .docx files without a Microsoft 365 subscription and if not are there any alternatives (lemm.ee)
submitted 10 months ago by FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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TLDR: can I edit docx files on word without a subscription and if not what are some apps that can allow me to do so

Like the title says I need the ability to edit .docx for college (sadly other file formats aren’t accepted AFAIK) and my Microsoft 365 subscription is expiring and will not be renewed thanks to you lovely people getting me on the Proton family of software and obsidian for note taking.

However i created a .docx file today and and got a popup in word saying my Microsoft subscription is expiring soon (in march I believe) and that I would lose many feature.

This scary message wasn’t very helpful as to what features id lose (probably a lot of them I don’t even use) but the internet has not been helpful in telling me if I can still view and edit all my docx files that I have been collecting and creating over the years and have migrated to my proton drive

If I won’t be able to access docx files in word what are some apps that can open them from my proton drive (this is a hard requirement for me).

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[–] infeeeee@lemm.ee 45 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Docx is not a proprietary format, it's a standard, it's called Office Open XML: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML

And M$ published its specifications, so Libreoffice devs could support it. But here comes the funny part: M$ (deliberately?) doesn't follow the specification it published. So the formatting problems of LibreOffice come from M$, because they don't follow their specs, but M$ can just do whatever they want because of its market share.

I read this story a long time ago, and I'm paraphrasing, but on this wiki page you can read a lot of controversies related to this format: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML

[–] grue@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago

Docx is not a proprietary format, it’s a standard

It's a "standard" only in the sense that Microsoft took the MS Office binary file formats (which are basically just writing the internal state of Word/Powerpoint/whatever to disc), serialized it to XML, half-assed some bullshit documentation for it, and bribed the standards body to rubber-stamp it. It's still, at it's core, basically defined by whatever nonsense Microsoft's implementation does.

[–] HumanPerson@sh.itjust.works 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Aren't the specifications also insanely long and complicated for good measure?

[–] infeeeee@lemm.ee 8 points 10 months ago

Yeah, wiki says it's 6000 pages. But that's not that long compared to other similar file standards, and it also contains pptx and xlsx.

For comparison PDF standard is about 1000 pages, HTML (without CSS, just pure HTML) is 1500 pages.

[–] unrelatedkeg@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 10 months ago

Not only are they insanely long, MS strategically doesn't follow its own specs in places so other software using the specs "fuck up formatting" even if they follow MS's specs perfectly.

[–] Cwilliams@beehaw.org 1 points 10 months ago

M$ is the best abbreviation for Microsoft yet