Word (.docx) Compatibility
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Word Compatibility in Revise
Our mission with Revise is build the most advanced agentic word processor in the world, and as such we treat Word files (.docx) as a first-class format. Our goal is that a document can pass through Revise on its way between Word users and nothing gets lost. This page is a current map of what survives the round trip today, what is partially supported, and what is still on the roadmap. We update it as coverage grows.
If you find a bug with our .docx format support, please reach out to support@revise.io and let us know!
Fully supported (round-trips both ways)
- Text and formatting - paragraphs, headings, alignment, line spacing, indents, and page breaks; bold, italic, underline, strikethrough and double strikethrough, small caps, all caps, character spacing, highlights, text colors, font sizes and families, superscript/subscript, hidden text, and links. Documents that carry their fonts through Word's theme (most do) resolve to the right typefaces.
- Paragraph borders and shading - per-edge borders (single, double, dashed, colored) and background fills, rendered on screen and in PDF.
- Tab stops - left, right, center, and decimal alignment, plus dot, hyphen, and underscore leaders. There is no ruler - ask the agent to set or move stops.
- Watermarks - DRAFT / CONFIDENTIAL-style text watermarks import from and export as Word's native format, and there's a dialog on the Layout tab to set your own.
- Line numbers - margin line numbering (pleading paper), with restart and count-by options, on screen and in PDF.
- Pagination controls - keep-with-next, keep-lines-together, widow/orphan control, and automatic hyphenation all paginate the way Word does.
- Tables of contents - a TOC imports as a live block that tracks your headings, and exports with real page numbers in both .docx and PDF.
- Clause numbering and cross-references - Word-style numbering schemes ("Section 1.", "1.01", "(i)") stay live - insert or delete a clause and everything renumbers - and REF / PAGEREF cross-references keep pointing at their targets.
- Tracked changes - insertions, deletions, formatting changes (with revert-to-prior on reject), paragraph split/merge revisions, moved text, and table-row revisions. Author names, dates, and Word revision identity are preserved in both directions, and Word redlines arrive in Revise as reviewable suggestions.
- Footnotes and endnotes - both streams, with correct per-stream numbering.
- Headers and footers - including three-zone layouts, different first-page headers, even-page slots, and PAGE / NUMPAGES fields.
- Comments - anchored ranges, reply threads, and resolved state are preserved through import and export, including Word's original comment IDs and ranges spanning paragraphs. Word comments arrive as live comment threads in Revise's margin - you can reply, resolve, and add new comments, and it all exports back to Word.
- Lists - ordered, unordered, and checklists, with basic nesting.
- Tables - including merged cells, cell backgrounds, column widths, and header rows.
- Inline images (PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP), equations (Word math converts to LaTeX and back), visible text in DrawingML and VML text boxes (flattened into editable paragraphs in reading order when floating geometry cannot be represented), and block-level content controls (the wrapper - tag, alias, and bindings - survives the round trip; inline controls keep their content but lose the wrapper).
- Page setup - size, orientation, and margins.
- Multi-section documents - per-section page size, orientation, margins, page-number restarts, and per-section headers & footers round-trip and render (a landscape exhibit stays landscape, with its own header). Continuous boundaries and 2- or 3-column sections render in Revise and export to Word, PDF, and HTML.
Partially supported
These import safely - the text always survives - but some structure or positioning is simplified:
- Text boxes and shapes - the text inside them imports as ordinary paragraphs; the box geometry itself is dropped.
- Floating images - the image survives but becomes inline; position and text-wrap settings are lost.
- Named styles - paragraphs remember their style identity and the document's original style definitions (firm templates included) survive the round trip, so Word shows "Heading 1" or "Firm Body Text" - not baked-on overrides. Editing the style definitions themselves inside Revise isn't supported yet.
- Legacy vector images (EMF / WMF) - preserved byte-for-byte through the round trip and re-exported intact; Revise renders a labeled placeholder on screen and in PDF (browsers can't draw these formats).
- Fields and bookmarks - PAGE / NUMPAGES, TOC, and REF / PAGEREF cross-references stay live (see above); other field types freeze to their last-cached text.
Not yet supported
- SmartArt and chart text - currently dropped on import.
- SVG images - not rendered yet (raster formats and preserved EMF/WMF are covered above).
- Right-to-left text - RTL and bidirectional layout aren't handled yet.
- Paragraph- and table-property revisions - a tracked change that only alters paragraph or table properties imports as the final state rather than a reviewable suggestion. (Text revisions are fully supported - see above.)
Roadmap
Our priority order is simple: anything that could silently lose text gets fixed first (that tier is now clear), then structure (merged cells, sections, tab stops, borders, and watermarks are done; floating-image positioning is next), then semantics (style editing, multi-column rendering, more live field types). Every release is checked by an automated round-trip suite that pushes generated torture-test documents through import and export and verifies nothing is lost. If a gap on this page matters to your workflow, tell us - real documents from real users are how we prioritize.