Updated October 14, 2026. Written for WordCraft 0.6.1 (what changed since).
Steps
- Open the editor at wordcraft.run/editor. The first visit downloads the app, 12 to 15 MB compressed; after that it opens from your browser's cache.
- Open the .doc. Drag it onto the page, or use Browse… under File › Open. Old
.dottemplates open the same way. - Scroll through it once. Look at pictures, tables and the places where pages break. The next sections list what tends to change.
- Save. Press Ctrl/⌘+S or choose File › Save.
report.doccomes out asreport.docx. Chrome and Edge open a save dialog so you can pick the folder; Firefox and Safari put the file in Downloads. - Keep the .doc until you have opened the new file in the program your reader uses.
That's the whole conversion. You can edit before saving, and the edits go into the .docx with everything else.
What carries over from a .doc
WordCraft reads the old binary format from Microsoft's published specification, without any Microsoft code. Its developers put the share of a typical .doc's content and formatting that survives at about 60%, a little below the 65% they give for .docx.
| Result | What |
|---|---|
| Comes through | Text and its formatting, styles, sections, headers and footers, tables, bulleted and numbered lists, custom tab stops, footnotes and endnotes, fields, bookmarks |
| Comes through | Inline and floating pictures (PNG, JPEG, TIFF, Windows bitmaps and the old WMF and EMF drawings) with their cropping, alt text, position and text wrapping; basic shapes, lines, groups and text boxes |
| Changes | Freeform shapes are dropped, and so is the stacking order of overlapping objects. Pictures in the Macintosh PICT format become an empty box of the right size |
| Doesn't open | Password-protected .doc files, and files saved by Word 6.0 or Word 95 |
Page breaks can also land in different places than in Word, because WordCraft's pagination doesn't match Word's line for line yet. If a heading ends up alone at the bottom of a page, put a page break before it (Ctrl/⌘+Enter) before you save.
A protected file has to be unlocked in the program that set the password, then saved without one. A Word 6 or 95 file needs Word or LibreOffice.
Fonts in the browser
A web page can't use the fonts installed on your computer, so a document set in Times New Roman or Arial is shown in WordCraft's built-in fonts (Source Serif 4, Source Sans 3, Inter, JetBrains Mono, plus faces for Chinese, Japanese and Arabic). The font names stay in the file, and Word shows the original fonts when it opens the .docx.
Lines can wrap a little differently because of the substitution. If you have the font as a file, choose Add Font… at the end of the font list and pick a .ttf, .otf, .woff or .woff2. The browser keeps added fonts for your next visit.
Why convert at all
Word opens a .doc in Compatibility Mode, which turns off newer Word features while the file stays in the old format. A .docx is a set of XML files in a zip archive: Microsoft says such files can be up to 75 percent smaller, a damaged part doesn't stop the rest from opening, and a .docx can't carry macros (only .docm can).
Once it's a .docx, the rest of WordCraft works on it as usual: export it as a PDF, track changes, or send its text to the AI writing assistant to proofread or summarize. The assistant reads .docx but not .doc, so convert first.
Other ways to convert
If you have Word, open the file and choose File › Info › Convert. Word converts it in place and clears the compatibility settings, so the layout appears as it would in a document made in current Word. That is the most faithful conversion there is, and the right one for a complicated legal or technical document.
For a folder of .doc files, install LibreOffice and convert them in one command, without opening each one. The --convert-to option takes a target format and a list of files:
soffice --headless --convert-to docx *.docThe converted files land in the current folder unless you add --outdir.
Online converters work by sending the file to a server. CloudConvert, for example, processes it in its cloud and deletes it straight after. That's fine for a recipe, less so for an old contract, a medical letter or anything with personal details. WordCraft reads and writes the file on your own machine.
The desktop version of WordCraft also comes with a command-line tool, wordcraft-cli, which converts one file at a time from a terminal: wordcraft-cli convert old.doc old.docx.
Which to use
One or two files with ordinary content (letters, reports, forms with tables) convert well in the browser, and you can fix anything that moved before saving. If the document is full of drawings and text boxes laid out to the millimetre, Word's own Convert keeps more. For more than a handful of files, script LibreOffice.
Whichever route you take, open the .docx afterwards and compare page count, pictures and headers against the original before you delete the .doc.