Just the words. You decide what counts as words.
Plain text keeps no fonts, no bold, no layout: only characters. But a Word document hides more than formatting: tables, footnotes, tracked changes and comments all need a decision. Flip each one and watch the .txt update.
We converted one source document into every major output format and measured the file that came out. The source was a 37.4 KB DOCX with headings, bold and italic text, a table, numbered and bulleted lists, and one embedded image.
Sizes are from one representative document converted with Pandoc and LibreOffice. Your own files will differ, especially with more images, but the relative ordering holds.
A PDF has no paragraphs. It stores “draw these glyphs at x, y in this font”, often one word or one line at a time, and a scanned page stores only a picture. Drop any PDF to see which kind you have and what its page instructions look like.
A .txt file doesn't say which alphabet it was written in. Word uses curly quotes, dashes and accents that take several bytes in UTF-8. Open that file with a program that assumes an older encoding and each extra byte becomes its own wrong character.
None of these show on screen, but each one decides whether the file behaves in the program that reads it next, a spreadsheet import, a code editor, an old Windows tool or a text-to-speech app.
Plain text is the one format every program on every computer can read, now and in 50 years. Pick your destination to get the settings that suit it.
If “just text” is too little, these keep more of the structure.
Yes, DOCX to TXT conversion is completely free with no signup, no watermark, and no usage limit. Convert as many files as you need.
Your DOCX to TXT file is sent over an encrypted connection to our servers, converted, and returned to you. Files are processed only to perform the conversion and are not stored or retained afterward, so they are removed automatically once your download is ready.
Most DOCX to TXT conversions finish in under a minute. A large file takes longer in proportion, though the work happens on your machine, so nothing waits on a sign-up.
Depends which formats. Lossless in, lossless out, and the file you get back is identical. Convert to something compressed and you trade a little quality for a smaller file, which is usually the trade you wanted.
Yes. The DOCX to TXT converter works on phones, tablets, and desktops in any modern browser including Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge.