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Because the DOC file format was a closed specification for many years, inconsistent handling of the format persists and may cause some loss of formatting information when handling the same file with multiple word processing programs.

Some specifications for Microsoft Office 97 binary file formats were published in 1997 under a restrictive license, but these specifications were removed from online download in 1999.

Specifications of later versions of Microsoft Office binary file formats were not publicly available.

The DOC format specification was available from Microsoft on request since 2006 under restrictive RAND-Z terms until February 2008.

After Sun Microsystems and OpenOffice. org reverse engineered the file format, Microsoft released a. DOC format specification under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise.

However, this specification does not describe all of the features used by DOC format and reverse engineered work remains necessary.