What is in a Word XML Document (*.xml) file?

After you saved a Word document into a Word XML Document (*.xml) file, you can actually open it in an XML browser to see how the entire word documents is represented in the XML file.

1. Open "Word_Tutorials.docx" and save it to "Word_Tutorials.xml" in Word XML Document format.

2. Open "Word_Tutorials.xml" in Firefox. If you collapse all first level elements, you will see that a Word XML Documents contains a list of "part" elements. Each "part" element is actually representing a file in the original .docx file.

For example, the main content of the original Word document is represented by this "part" element:

<pkg:part pkg:name="/word/document.xml"
   pkg:contentType="application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument
   .wordprocessingml.document.main+xml">
<pkg:xmlData>
...
</pkg:xmlData>
</pkg:part>

Another example, the first picture in the original Word document is represented by this "part" element:

<pkg:part pkg:name="/word/media/image1.png"
   pkg:contentType="image/png" pkg:compression="store">
<pkg:binaryData>
...
</pkg:binaryData>
</pkg:part>

Top level relations between the main file and other files are represented by this "part" element:

<pkg:part pkg:name="/_rels/.rels"
   pkg:contentType="application/vnd.openxmlformats-package
   .relationships+xml" pkg:padding="512">
<pkg:xmlData>
...
</pkg:xmlData>
</pkg:part>

⇒ Understanding Microsoft Word File Types

⇐ Convert Word Documents to XML Files

⇑ Converting Microsoft Word to/from Other Format

⇑⇑ MS Word - Frequently Asked Questions