DOC 97-2003

Writable

document · also known as Microsoft Word for Windows Document (97-XP)

With the release of Word 97, Microsoft revised the native binary word processing format, which is based on its generic OLE2 Compound Document Format. The format is proprietary and Microsoft does not make details of its structure public. The information here is derived primarily from OpenOffice.org's reverse-engineered documentation of the format and should not therefore be regarded as definitive. A Word document is stored as a ‘WordDocument’ stream within a Compound Document Format file. The format remained unchanged with the releases of Word 2000, 2002 and 2003. An alternative extension of .wbk refers to a backup file of a Word document, however there is no material or structural difference between a .wbk file and the .doc file it is a backup of.

Identify it

Extensions	`.doc.wbk`
MIME types	`application/mswordapplication/vnd.ms-word`
Signatures	`d0cf11e0a1b11ae1` at byte 0 (Microsoft Word for Windows 97 - 2002) `eca5c100` at byte 512
PRONOM	`fmt/40`
Wikidata	`Q686498Q28858035Q28858032`
Library of Congress	`fdd000509`
Apple UTI	`com.microsoft.word.doc`

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Open it

LibreOffice WriterOpen sourcereads and writes · Mozilla Public License, version 2.0
ExifToolOpen sourcereads · Artistic License / GNU General Public License, version 1.0 or later
Calligra WordsOpen sourcereads · GNU General Public License
CeltxOpen sourcereads · Mozilla Public License
HuMo-genOpen sourcereads · GNU General Public License, version 3.0
LibreOfficeOpen sourcereads · MPL-2.0
Notational VelocityOpen sourcereads · GNU General Public License, version 3.0
OpenOffice WriterOpen sourcereads · GNU Lesser General Public License
Adobe RoboHelpwrites
Lotus Word Pro Release 9reads and writes
Microsoft Office OneNote 2007writes
Microsoft Office Publisher 2007reads and writes
Microsoft Office Word 2007reads and writes
WordPerfect 11writes
ABBYY FineReader 11writes · end-user license agreement
ABBYY FineReader OCR 7.0 Professional Editionwrites
Adobe Acrobat 9 Prowrites
Jedit Xreads and writes
Microsoft Mathematics 4.0writes
Microsoft Office Word 2002reads and writes
Microsoft Publisher 6.0reads and writes
Microsoft Wordreads and writes · end-user license agreement
Microsoft Word 2000reads and writes
Microsoft Word 2003reads and writes
Microsoft Word 97reads and writes
Microsoft Works 8.0reads and writes
OmniPage Pro 12writes
PolyEditreads and writes
Q4041798reads and writes
StarOffice 5.2writes
Storyistwrites
WPS Writer 2013reads and writes
ACDSeereads · proprietary license
Corel WordPerfect Lightningreads · freeware
CorelDRAW Graphics Suitereads
MAXQDAreads · proprietary license
Solid PDF Creatorreads
Distributed Password Recoveryreads
Duxbury Braille Translatorreads
Front Page Explorerreads

And 13 more in the JSON record.

Convert it

To	With	Fidelity	Command and losses
Office Open XML Wordprocessing Document, ECMA-376 1st Edition	LibreOffice	Partial	`soffice --headless --convert-to docx in.doc` Layout may shift; macros and some features are not kept.
OpenDocument	LibreOffice	Partial	`soffice --headless --convert-to odt in.doc` Layout may shift; macros and some features are not kept.
PDF	LibreOffice	Partial	`soffice --headless --convert-to pdf in.doc` Fixed layout: the document is no longer editable.

Sources

From Just Solve the File Format Problem (File Formats Wiki), PRONOM, Wikidata. Updated 2026-10-24.

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