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In order to use the contents of a Word Document (“.doc” or “.docx” extension) in a concordancer it must be converted or saved as a plain text file (“.txt” extension). I will outline two different ways you can do this below.

Method 1 (recommended)

1. open the document in Word,
2. do a “select all” (ctrl+A),
3. “copy” (ctrl+C),
4. open Notepad (found in Start > All Programs > Accessories),
5. “paste” (ctrl+V) the content into Notepad,
6. save the file

Method 2

1. open the document in Word,
2. do a “Save as” in Word (goto File > Save as),
3. select “Save as type” (see image) as “plain text”,
4. click “Save”,
5. when the dialogue box appears (for non-English OSs) check “allow character substitution” and then click “OK”,

This can be tedious however if you have many files to convert. There are freeware programs that can automate this task. But please be careful as some programs available may be malicious, that is, adware, malware or spyware.

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