Microsoft Word for Macintosh

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File Format
Name Microsoft Word for Macintosh
Ontology
MIME Type(s) application/msword
PRONOM fmt/346, x-fmt/1, x-fmt/64, x-fmt/65
Released 1985

This article covers the line of word processing formats used by some early versions of Microsoft Word for Macintosh. The format is sometimes called MCW, though that could cause it to be confused with MacWrite.

Format identification tools consistently treat these formats as distinct from the formats used by other MS Word platforms, though Wikipedia says that Word 4 and 5 for Mac belong to the same format family as Word 1 and 2 for Windows. It's not clear how to reconcile this.

Identification

Files reportedly begin with the following byte sequences:

  • v1.0: fe 32 00 ?? 00 00 00 00
  • v3.0: fe 34 00 ?? 00 00 00 00
  • v4.0: fe 37 00 1c 00 00 00 00
  • v5.0: fe 37 00 23 00 00 00 00

Sample files

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