Files with the extension .docx are for files created by Microsoft’s Office 2007. Unfortunately, this file format is not understood by many other office productivity and word processing applications making it hard to view them if you don’t have Microsoft’s Office 2007.

You do have a number of options that you can take when trying to view these filees. The first and easiest is to ask the sender of the .docx file to resend the document in the older Office 2000 format or in the more generic Rich Text Format. If not, you can try the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats.

If you are using OpenOffice with Linux, Novell has an OpenOffice OpenXML Translator.

If you are using Office 2004 on a Mac, there is an OpenXML (the underlying format of .docx files) available on Microsoft’s Mactopia website that should help.