WordProcessingML

WordProcessingML or Word 2003 XML Document is an XML-based format which was introduced in Microsoft Office 2003 as one of the formats which could be chosen in the "Save As" feature to save Word documents, though not the default format (which was DOC, a proprietary binary format). This is a different format from the DOCX format introduced in Office 2007, which consists of a ZIP archive of various files including XML. In contrast, WordProcessingML is a single XML file, uncompressed, and is unable to store all features which can be present in an Word document.

Identification
A WordProcessingML file has the following header:

 <?mso-application progid="Word.Document"?> 

(which can vary somewhat depending on what version of Word it is saved from; from Word 2007 it lacks line breaks and uses different namespace URIs:,  ,  )

Related formats

 * SpreadsheetML
 * DataDiagrammingML

Sample file

 * Sample WordProcessingML document

Links

 * Wikipedia article (Microsoft Office XML formats)