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OOXML Documentation

Parth Gupta 180 Reputation points
2023-06-15T08:30:47.62+00:00

Hi,

As per my understanding, the .docx , .pptx, and .xlsx files belong to Microsoft's OOXML file format. Please correct me if wrong.

I was looking for the technical documentation of this file format but could not find one.

Could you kindly guide me to where I can find the documentation for these file formats.

Thanks.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Open Specifications
Microsoft 365 and Office | Open Specifications

Technical documents for protocols, computer languages, standards support, and data portability. The goal with Open Specifications is to help developers open new opportunities to interoperate with Windows, SQL, Office, and SharePoint.

Answer accepted by question author

Tom Jebo 2,436 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator
2023-06-15T16:06:40.45+00:00

Hi Parth,

The Office Open XML markup references are documented in ISO 29500 in four parts. You can find the main reference for the markup language in part 1. Here's the link to download the documents:

https://www.iso.org/standard/71691.html

(click on the "download" hyperlink)

Along with that, you would also want to confer with the Open Specifications, specifically our standards based implementation notes and extensions documents here:

Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Standards Support

In this set of documents, you can pay close attention to MS-OI29500 and MS-DOCX, MS-XLSX, MS-PPTX and MS-ODRAWXML.

I hope this helps,

Best regards,
Tom Jebo
Microsoft Open Specifications Support

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  1. John Korchok 232.6K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2023-06-15T16:10:31.1966667+00:00

    This site doesn't create links correctly using Firefox as a browser. I've added the bare URLs below each link. Here's the official documentation: ECMA-376 Office Open XML File Formats.

    https://www.ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/standards/ecma-376/

    Third-party sites that explain the documentation in more detail:

    [OfficeOpenXML]

    http://officeopenxml.com/

    [Datypic]

    http://www.datypic.com/sc/ooxml/

    Most OOXML tags are abreviations or acronyms. So w:r stands for wordprocessing region. Searching on OOXML w:r will get you this page:

    [Wordprocessing Text]

    http://officeopenxml.com/WPtext.php

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