Microsoft released the Office Compatibility Pack allowing users of Word 2003, 2002, 2000 and 97 to open the new format as well as edit and save them.

[8] Modern versions of Word can also open documents in the pre-97 DOC formats, but should be manually enabled in the File Block Settings.

Other word processors, such as OpenOffice.org Writer, IBM Lotus Symphony, Apple Pages and AbiWord, can also create and read DOC files, although with some limitations.

The DOC format specification was available from Microsoft on request[13] since 2006[14] under restrictive RAND-Z terms until February 2008.

[citation needed] DOC is sometimes used by users of Palm OS as shorthand for PalmDoc, an unrelated format (commonly using PDB filename extension) used to encode text files such as ebooks.