Nixt Writer documentation

Nixt Writer is a word processor for Microsoft Word documents (.docx). It opens, edits and saves the file on your computer. You don’t need an account to open a file, nothing is synced, and the app sends no telemetry.

Get Nixt Writer from the Download page.

What Nixt Writer is for

Nixt Writer is built for Word documents. If you try to open a spreadsheet, a presentation or a PDF, Writer tells you which Nixt Office app opens it — Nixt Sheets, Nixt Slides or Nixt PDF. See Files for other Nixt Office apps.

Writer is designed around one idea: a Word document you open should still be the same Word document when you save it. The parts of a file that Writer doesn’t edit — for example a chart’s data, an embedded font, macros or custom XML — are written back exactly as they were. A paragraph you didn’t edit is saved exactly as it was read. Only what you change is rewritten. File formats and compatibility explains what that covers.

What you can do

Area	What’s available	Read more
Writing	Type and edit paragraphs, line and page breaks, copy and paste, undo and redo, a live word count and a heading navigator	Writing and editing
Text formatting	Ten fonts, fifteen sizes, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, text colour, highlight and Clear formatting	Formatting text
Paragraphs and styles	Alignment, indents, line spacing and space after; apply styles, make a style from a paragraph, redefine and delete styles	Paragraphs and styles
Lists	Bulleted and numbered lists, nine levels, five numbering formats, restart at 1	Lists
Tables	Insert tables, type in cells, add and delete rows and columns, merge and split cells, borders, shading and header rows	Tables
Pictures and charts	Insert and resize pictures and give them alt text; charts in Word documents are drawn	Pictures and charts
Links	Web and email links, bookmarks, links to bookmarks, and cross-references that update	Links, bookmarks and cross-references
References	Table of contents, footnotes, captions, a table of figures, citations and a reference list	Tables of contents, footnotes and citations
Mail merge	Merge a CSV address list into a letter, preview record by record, and produce one page per record	Mail merge
Page layout	Page size, orientation, margins, one to three columns, headers, footers and page numbers	Page layout
Design	Four document themes, page colour, text watermarks and a page border	Themes, page colour and watermarks
Review	Comments, track changes with Accept and Reject, and comparing two documents	Comments, track changes and compare
Protection	Restrict editing to read-only, comments only or tracked changes, with an optional password	Restricting editing
Accessibility	A checker for missing alt text, missing header rows, skipped heading levels, vague link text, low contrast and more	Accessibility checker
Safety	A recovery copy 20 seconds after you stop typing, the last ten kept, and any of them opened back into the editor	Autosave and earlier versions
Export and print	PDF, web page (HTML), Markdown and plain text; print through your PDF viewer	Printing and exporting

Your files stay on your computer

Writer opens and saves files on this computer. There is no sign-in, and no file is uploaded anywhere.
The copies autosave keeps are stored in Writer’s own data folder on this computer, never next to your document and never over it.
A link opens in another app only when you choose to follow it.
Printing hands a PDF to the PDF viewer on your computer.

Where to start

Getting started — create, open, save and close a document.
The Writer window — a tour of the title bar, the ribbon, the panes and the status bar.
Keyboard shortcuts — every shortcut in one table.
Troubleshooting — if something doesn’t behave as you expect.