Real Examples

These are real .docx files converted to .dex. Every detail survives the round trip.

Absolute Chaos

A deliberately terrible Word document with every formatting option, comments by "The Intern" and "someone's cat", footnotes, tables, and fonts like Jokerman and Wingdings.

22 parts 0 differences 104.2% size ratio

First 50 lines of .dex output

What this document contains

FeatureCountDetails
Fonts15+Jokerman, Wingdings, Papyrus, Comic Sans MS, Curlz MT, Snap ITC, and more
Colors20+Every color of the rainbow, often multiple per paragraph
Comments3By "The Intern", "someone's cat", and "UNKNOWN"
Footnotes5Including "Citation needed. Actually, everything needs a citation."
Highlights12+cyan, magenta, red, yellow, green, darkYellow
FormattingAllBold, italic, underline, superscript, subscript, all combined

Round-trip verification

$ docex decompile absolute_chaos.docx -o chaos.dex
$ docex compile chaos.dex -o roundtrip.docx
$ docex diff absolute_chaos.docx roundtrip.docx

Parts: 22
Differences: 0
Size ratio: 104.2%
Result: PASS

Academic Manuscript

A real academic paper about social media usage patterns and sleep quality. Written in Word with tracked changes, reviewer comments, and inline figures.

212 paragraphs 38 comments 14 tracked changes 10 figures

First 40 lines of .dex output

Headings extracted

1. The Effects of Social Media on Sleep Quality: A Systematic
   Review and Meta-Analysis
2. Abstract
3. Introduction
4. Literature Review
5. Methodological Framework
6. Methods
7. Data Collection
8. Classification Pipeline
9. Results
10. Effect Size Analysis
11. Discussion
12. Conclusion
13. References

Comment examples

{comment id:1 by:"Research Assistant" date:"2026-03-18T11:15:00Z"}
Strong framing. Consider whether reviewers might push back on
the effect size interpretation. Worth preempting this objection
in the discussion.
{/comment}

{comment id:31 by:"Editor Williams" date:"2026-03-24T10:00:00Z"}
TYPO: The abstract contains "scraped from the research dataset from
the research dataset" -- duplicate phrase. Delete one instance.
{/comment}

Tracked change examples

# Deletion and insertion (replacement)
{del id:25 by:"Research Assistant" date:"2026-03-18T14:41:13Z"}GDPR{/del}
{ins id:26 by:"Research Assistant" date:"2026-03-18T14:41:13Z"}GDPR/DPA{/ins}

# Numeric precision edit
{del id:21 by:"Research Assistant" date:"2026-03-18T14:41:12Z"}10.4 days{/del}
{ins id:22 by:"Research Assistant" date:"2026-03-18T14:41:12Z"}10.4 calendar days{/ins}

# Format standardization
{del id:23 by:"Research Assistant" date:"2026-03-18T14:41:12Z"}14.2%{/del}
{ins id:24 by:"Research Assistant" date:"2026-03-18T14:41:12Z"}14.2 percent{/ins}

Tracked Changes in .dex

When you edit a .docx through docex, every change is tracked by default. Here is how tracked changes appear in the .dex format.

How replacements work

When you run docex replace paper.docx "12,847 records" "12,847 records extracted from the research dataset", the .dex shows:

{del id:17 by:"Research Assistant" date:"2026-03-18T14:39:03Z"}12,847 records{/del}
{ins id:18 by:"Research Assistant" date:"2026-03-18T14:39:03Z"}12,847 records extracted from the research dataset{/ins}

In Word, this appears as 12,847 records 12,847 records extracted from the research dataset in the review pane.

A complete before/after example

Before (original document):

{p id:7AF60E6B}
{font "Times New Roman"}{b}Purpose.{/b}{/font}{font "Times New Roman"} A systematic
review identified that social media usage patterns significantly affect
sleep quality outcomes, with inconsistent measurement approaches across
the literature regarding the General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR).{/font}
{/p}

After (with tracked changes):

{p id:7AF60E6B}
{font "Times New Roman"}{b}Purpose.{/b}{/font}{font "Times New Roman"} A systematic
review identified that social media usage patterns significantly affect
sleep quality outcomes, with inconsistent measurement approaches across
the literature regarding the General Data Protection
Regulation ({/font}{del id:25 by:"Research Assistant" date:"2026-03-18T14:41:13Z"}GDPR{/del}
{ins id:26 by:"Research Assistant" date:"2026-03-18T14:41:13Z"}GDPR/DPA{/ins}
{font "Times New Roman"}).{/font}
{/p}

Reading tracked changes

.dex syntaxWhat it meansHow it looks in Word
{del id:N by:"Author" date:"..."}text{/del} Deleted text (crossed out) text
{ins id:N by:"Author" date:"..."}text{/ins} Inserted text (added) text
del + ins together Replacement (old text deleted, new text inserted) old new

Accepting and rejecting

# Accept all tracked changes
docex accept paper.docx

# Accept only change #25
docex accept paper.docx 25

# Reject all changes (revert to original)
docex reject paper.docx

# Create a clean copy (no tracked changes markup)
docex clean paper.docx -o clean.docx