How to open an XDW (DocuWorks) file

DocuWorks comes from FUJIFILM Business Innovation, which was called Fuji Xerox until 2021. Japanese offices have used it for years alongside their multifunction printers, scanning paper into files and passing them around. The people who receive those files outside the company often do not have it.

The short answer

If you only need to read it, the maker offers a free viewer, DocuWorks Viewer Light.

Fujifilm lists the desktop downloads on its Japanese support pages, and the apps are in the App Store and Google Play. Unlike a .jtd file from Ichitaro, a .xdw can at least be read on a Mac. Fujifilm also says it does not answer questions about using the free viewer.

What Viewer Light can and cannot do

Reading the pages and printing them costs nothing. Writing annotations, swapping pages and combining several documents into one are what DocuWorks is really for, and they need the paid product. Offices that stamp or mark up documents and send them back usually end up buying it.

Turning it into a PDF

There are fewer clean ways to do this on the receiving end than you might expect. DocuWorks itself converts to PDF; Viewer Light does not.

In practice you have three options:

• Ask the sender for a PDF. With DocuWorks it takes a few clicks.
• Open it in Viewer Light and print it to PDF: "Microsoft Print to PDF" on Windows, or the PDF button in the print dialog on a Mac.
• Open it in the XDW editor here and save it as PDF. If the document has real text, the PDF keeps it searchable and copyable.

Printing to PDF keeps the look, but the text may turn into an image. If you need to search or copy the text, a PDF from the sender comes out cleaner.

Why XDW and not PDF?

It is an awkward format to receive, but the sender has reasons. DocuWorks was designed around paper: bundling documents into a binder, adding sticky notes and swapping pages work much as they would with a paper file, and the office copier can scan straight into it.

DocuWorks is built for passing documents around inside a company, and the trouble starts when one leaves it.

Open and annotate it in your browser (XDW editor)

This site can open it as well. XDW is a proprietary format with no published specification. We worked out how to read and write it by checking publicly available documents against the free Viewer Light, one at a time, and released the engine as open source (EZPZ File XDW). The editor runs inside your browser, so the file is never uploaded, and it works on a Mac without DocuWorks. On the English page its menus are in English.

• Opens .xdw documents and .xbd binders. You can search the text and copy it.
• Add text, sticky notes, date stamps, highlighter, rectangles and other annotations, and rotate, delete or reorder pages.
• Saves in DocuWorks format (.xdw or .xbd), or as PDF or plain text.
• Cannot open documents protected with a password or a digital certificate, and cannot yet check whether a signature is valid.

The editor's start screen has a four-minute walkthrough video, narrated in Japanese.

Open the XDW editor

Summary

• To read it, DocuWorks Viewer Light is free on Windows, Mac and phones.
• To annotate it and send it back, the XDW editor here is enough. Full editing needs DocuWorks.
• For a PDF, ask the sender or print it to PDF. The XDW editor here also saves PDF.
• If you exchange files with them regularly, agreeing on PDF fixes it for good.