MS Word 2013 Saves Documents in DOC Instead of DOCX

MS Word 2007 and above versions of Microsoft Word save all their documents in DOCX file format by default. The new DOCX format is more efficient than the legacy DOCformat in many ways. The latest version of MS Word which is MS Word 2013 by default saves the documents in DOCX as well. One of the biggest advantages of DOCX file format is that it supports some additional formatting which is not possible when legacy file extension is used to save the documents. Also, the file size of the DOCX files is remarkably lesser as compared to the ones that have DOC extensions.

Even after knowing the above benefits of saving the file in DOCX format, some users might still want to save their MS Word files with the legacy extension (i.e. DOC) to allow the older versions of the program (MS Word 2003 or earlier) to support the files created in the post 2003 versions of MS Word. This situate is very rare these days though.

To save the files in legacy format, the files must be saved in the compatibility mode. In order to do so, while saving the files, the option ‘Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc)’ must be selected from the ‘Save as type’ drop-down list in the ‘Save As’ box.

The above discussed method can be followed if the MS Word 2013 works perfectly well and saves the files in DOCX by default. However there might be instances when the default configuration of the application has been manually or automatically modified. As a result, sometimes MS Word 2013 might start saving the files with the legacy file extension, i.e. DOC by default.
If you face such issues with your MS Word 2013, you can easily rectify the problem by modifying the configuration of the application back to its default settings.

Below is the process using which you can configure your instance of MS Word 2013 to start saving the files in DOCX format by default:

    ■Log on to the computer using the account on which MS Word 2013 configuration is to be made.

    ■Once logged on, open any existing Word document or create a new one.

    ■On the opened interface, go to the FILE tab.

    ■From the displayed list, click Options.

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    ■On the opened Word Options box, click to select Save option from the left pane.

    ■From the right pane, under the Save documents section, choose Word Document (*.docx) option from the Save files in this format drop-down list.

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    ■Once done, click OK to save the changes.

    ■Restart MS Word 2013 to allow the changes to take effect.

 
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