Sometimes you just need the words. No bold, no italic, no fonts, no formatting—just pure text. Converting DOCX to TXT extracts the content from your Word documents, stripping away everything except the actual text. The result is a clean, lightweight file that opens anywhere, processes quickly, and works with any system that handles text.
TL;DR
- Upload DOCX to TinyUtils Document Converter
- Select Plain Text as output
- Download clean text without formatting
- Ready for any text editor or processing
Understanding DOCX and Plain Text
What is DOCX?
DOCX is Microsoft Word's native format, storing documents as structured XML inside a ZIP container. It captures everything Word can do: fonts, styles, images, tables, headers, footers, Track Changes, comments, embedded objects, and complex formatting. This richness makes DOCX excellent for creating professional documents but also means significant overhead for the file format.
When you open a DOCX file, Word (or compatible software) interprets all that structured data to display your document. But all that structure isn't always needed—sometimes you just want the words themselves.
What is Plain Text (TXT)?
Plain text is exactly what it sounds like: text and nothing else. No formatting codes, no markup, no structure—just characters. TXT files are the most basic digital document format, readable by every computer system ever made. From 1960s mainframes to modern smartphones, plain text works everywhere.
TXT files are tiny compared to formatted documents. A DOCX with 1,000 words might be 50KB; the same content as TXT might be 6KB. This efficiency matters for processing, storage, and transmission.
Why Convert DOCX to Plain Text?
1. Text Analysis and Processing
Most text analysis tools—word counters, sentiment analyzers, natural language processing systems, machine learning models—expect plain text input. Converting DOCX to TXT prepares your content for automated processing without formatting interference.
2. Maximum Compatibility
Plain text opens in literally any text editor on any system. Notepad, TextEdit, nano, vim, VS Code, Sublime Text—anything that handles text opens TXT files. When you need content accessible on any device without software requirements, plain text is the answer.
3. Clean Content Extraction
Sometimes you need to pull content out of Word documents for use elsewhere: populating databases, feeding content management systems, importing into web forms, or copying into other applications. Plain text provides clean content without formatting artifacts.
4. Small File Sizes
TXT files are dramatically smaller than DOCX. For archival, transmission, or systems with storage constraints, converting to plain text often cuts size significantly (sometimes 80–90% for text-heavy documents).
5. Accessibility
Plain text is inherently accessible. Screen readers handle it perfectly. There's no formatting to interpret or misread. For users who need content in the most straightforward format possible, TXT delivers.
6. Version Control
Git and other version control systems work best with plain text. Converting documents to TXT enables meaningful diffs, merges, and revision tracking that binary formats like DOCX don't support well.
What Gets Removed in Conversion
Converting to plain text strips everything except the actual text content:
- Character formatting — Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough all disappear
- Fonts and sizes — All text becomes uniform in the TXT file
- Colors — Text color and highlighting are removed
- Images and graphics — Visual elements are removed entirely
- Tables — Cell structure simplifies to text (content preserved, layout flattened)
- Headers and footers — Page-level content is removed
- Page breaks — Document becomes continuous text
- Margins and layout — No page structure in plain text
- Hyperlinks — Link text preserved, URL information may be lost
- Comments and Track Changes — Editorial markup is removed
What's Preserved
The conversion preserves what matters for text extraction:
- All text content — Every word from your document
- Paragraph breaks — Line breaks between paragraphs
- Basic structure — Text order and paragraph separation
- Special characters — Unicode characters, symbols, accented letters
How to Convert DOCX to Plain Text
Using TinyUtils Document Converter
- Navigate to TinyUtils Document Converter
- Click the upload area or drag and drop your .docx file
- Select Plain Text (.txt) from the output format dropdown
- Click Convert to process the document
- Download your .txt file
- Open in any text editor or use in your processing workflow
The converter extracts all readable text from your Word document, preserving paragraph structure while removing all formatting.
Batch Conversion
Need to extract text from multiple Word documents? Upload several DOCX files at once. The converter processes each file and delivers a ZIP archive containing all your TXT files, preserving original filenames with .txt extensions.
How Tables Convert
Tables present a special case in plain text conversion. TXT files can't represent visual table structure, so table content is linearized:
- Cell content — Text from each cell is preserved
- Separation — Cells may be separated by tabs or spaces
- Rows — Each row typically becomes a line of text
- Structure — The visual grid layout is lost
For documents where table structure matters, consider converting to CSV or Markdown instead of plain text. If you only need the text content from tables, TXT extraction works fine.
Common Use Cases
Content Extraction for Databases
Need to import document content into a database? Extract text from DOCX files and load the TXT output into your database system. The clean text is ready for text fields without formatting code interference.
Natural Language Processing
NLP tools, sentiment analysis, topic modeling, and machine learning text classifiers typically require plain text input. Converting DOCX to TXT prepares your documents for automated language analysis.
Word Count and Text Analysis
While Word provides word counts, sometimes you need external tools for detailed text analysis. Plain text works with command-line tools (wc, grep), analysis scripts, and specialized text analysis software.
Accessibility Remediation
For users who need content in the simplest possible format, plain text removes all barriers. Screen readers handle TXT perfectly. Users with specific accessibility needs can apply their own formatting preferences.
Programmatic Processing
Scripts, APIs, and automated workflows often process text more easily than binary document formats. Converting DOCX to TXT enables programmatic text manipulation with standard text processing tools.
Search Index Population
Search engines and internal search systems index plain text efficiently. Convert documents to TXT for cleaner indexing without formatting markup that might interfere with search relevance.
Content Migration
When moving content between systems, plain text provides a clean intermediate format. Extract content from Word documents, then import into your destination system with formatting applied there.
Character Encoding
The converter produces UTF-8 encoded plain text, which supports:
- All Latin characters — English, French, German, Spanish, etc.
- Extended Latin — Accented characters, special symbols
- Cyrillic — Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, etc.
- Greek — Modern and ancient Greek characters
- Asian scripts — Chinese, Japanese, Korean (CJK)
- Special symbols — Mathematical, currency, arrows, etc.
UTF-8 is the modern standard for text encoding, supported by all current operating systems and applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will I lose table data?
Table text content is preserved; table structure (rows, columns, borders) is not. Cell contents become plain text, typically with tabs or spaces between what were columns. For structured data, consider CSV output instead.
What about images?
Images are removed entirely. Plain text cannot represent images. If you need images from your DOCX, export them separately or convert to a format that supports images (HTML, PDF).
Can I keep some formatting?
For minimal formatting (headings, lists, emphasis), convert to Markdown instead of plain text. Markdown preserves basic structure while remaining a plain text format that's easy to process.
Will hyperlinks work?
Link text (the clickable words) is preserved. The URL target may or may not be preserved depending on conversion settings. Plain text doesn't support clickable links—they're just text.
What about headers and footers?
Headers and footers are typically removed in plain text conversion since they represent page-level formatting that doesn't exist in continuous text files.
Can I convert back to DOCX?
You can convert TXT to DOCX, but you won't recover the original formatting. The round-trip produces a plain Word document without the original styles, images, or formatting. Always keep original files if formatting matters.
What's the maximum file size?
The converter handles DOCX files up to 50MB. The resulting TXT files will be much smaller since all formatting, images, and structural data are removed.
When to Use Other Formats
Plain text isn't always the right choice. Consider alternatives for specific needs:
- Need basic formatting? — Convert to Markdown instead
- Need table structure? — Convert to CSV for tabular data
- Need document structure? — Convert to HTML for semantic markup
- Need visual fidelity? — Convert to PDF for exact appearance
Why Use an Online Converter?
While you can copy-paste from Word to extract text, an online converter provides advantages:
- Cleaner extraction — Properly strips all formatting without artifacts
- Batch processing — Convert multiple files at once, download as ZIP
- Consistent encoding — Always produces proper UTF-8 text
- No Word required — Convert from any device with a browser
- Handles complex documents — Works with documents that might crash during copy-paste
Ready to Extract Pure Text?
Converting DOCX to plain text gives you clean, portable content ready for analysis, processing, or any system that works with text. Open TinyUtils Document Converter, upload your Word document, and download text stripped of all formatting.
Need other format conversions? Check out our guides for DOCX to Markdown, PDF to TXT, and DOCX to PDF workflows.