OOXML Documentation

Parth Gupta 100 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.

Office Open Specifications
Office Open Specifications
Office: A suite of Microsoft productivity software that supports common business tasks, including word processing, email, presentations, and data management and analysis.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.
119 questions
Accepted answer
  1. Tom Jebo 1,906 Reputation points Microsoft Employee
    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

    1 person found this answer helpful.

1 additional answer

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. John Korchok 4,936 Reputation points
    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

    1 person found this answer helpful.