I'd try
Libre Office for your usage.
For most documents, it should be able to open them fine (Even most .docx), with minor formatting issues. Only way they wouldn't would be if you were doing some major MS specific stuff (like embedding an Excel sheet (OLE), etc.. in the document). Can do that somewhat, but I believe in a different way. If they were saved as a '.doc' and
not '.docx', then you shouldn't have any problems beyond the normal opening the binary files.
Libre Office should be able to open the
standard .docx files fine, but IIRC, Office didn't fully support the OpenXML standard till Office 2013... (Maybe 2010, but that doesn't feel right to me :/ ).
-J
Edit: Meh... I can't type sometimes...
P.S. Technical junk -- Okay, the .docx is just a zip container for XML files, like .odt, etc... So, in theory, you have your .docx file, and can use winzip, 7-zip, or the like to extract that file. Then, you will find an XML file that should be named:
[extract dir]/word/document.xml
That will have all the text in it... It can be a major PITA to extract the text from the word .docx XML, but it's feasible anyway (A lot of times words are seperated by multiple XML tags... *sigh*).
Code: |
The .docx XML for that is (I added Comments):
<!-- Start the Paragraph -->
<w:p w:rsidR="004826E2" w:rsidRDefault="001D0DB0">
<!-- Paragraph body here -->
<w:r><w:t>This is the song that never ends. It goes on and on my friends.</w:t></w:r>
<!-- End paragraph -->
</w:p>
... Yeah... *sigh*
|
So,
most the time you'll have the text semi-sane, but it can get messy. The actual text should between the:
Code: |
<w:r><w:t>
Text here
</w:t></w:r>
|
blocks... :/ Oh, and it's usually written as a single line.