A full-featured word processing program for Windows and Mac from Microsoft. Available stand-alone or as part of the Microsoft Office suite, Word contains rudimentary desktop publishing capabilities and is the most widely used word processing program on the market. Word files are commonly used as the format for sending text documents via email because almost every user with a computer can read a Word document by using the Word application, a Word viewer or a word processor that imports the Word format (see
Microsoft Word Viewer).
In the 1980s, Microsoft introduced Word for several platforms, including XENIX, DOS, Mac, Atari, OS/2 and eventually Windows. See
Microsoft Office,
DOC file and
Office Open XML.