Isaac Maw
Technical Content Creator
Published June 04, 2025
Updated October 27, 2026
5 min
The Complete Guide to Adding DOCX Editor to React Applications
Isaac Maw
Technical Content Creator
You can add DOCX editing to a React app by installing Apryse WebViewer, the SDK underlying the DOCX Editor, via npm i @pdftron/webviewer, or clone the React sample repo from GitHub. Once installed, enable editing by passing initialMode: 'docxEditor' to the WebViewer constructor, restart your app, and the embedded Word editor interface will appear.
To load an existing file, pass a URL through the initialDoc property, or call instance.UI.loadDocument() with the file path and initialMode: 'docxEditor' set. To save changes, call documentViewer.getDocument().getFileData(), convert the returned data to a Uint8Array, and wrap it in a File object with the DOCX MIME type for upload or download.
This gives you an embedded Word document editor setup that runs entirely client-side, supporting formatting, headers and footers, lists, and track changes directly inside your React application.
Adding DOCX editing to a React application does not require Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, or a server. The React DOCX Editor runs entirely in the browser and edits native DOCX files without a conversion step. Read more about secure, client-side Word editing.
The Apryse DOCX Editor allows users to:
- Create entirely new DOCX documents.
- Open and edit existing DOCX documents.
- Change formatting of text (bold, italics, underline) as well as non-printing characters
- Alter fonts, font size, and set headings.
- Align, justify, and control line spacing, as well as section breaks.
- Edit headers and footers.
- Insert bullets or numbered lists.
What You’ll Learn
This blog post will guide you through the fast and easy integration of a ready-to-use React DOCX Editor, allowing users to view, edit, and modify DOCX documents directly in their web browser.
The Apryse DOCX Editor SDK gives your application word processing features for creating, editing, and formatting DOCX files. It reads and writes native DOCX XML, so formatting stays intact between what users see in the editor and the file they save, with true WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) accuracy.
Compliance
The Apryse DOCX Editor edits the Word document in client memory at every step. You load and save DOCX documents from local file storage or a URL, such as an AWS S3 bucket. When you save, the resulting blob goes back into your bucket, uploads as a new version, or downloads as native DOCX or PDF.
Track changes support compliance workflows by giving reviewers a record of every edit: what changed, who made it, and when. Each reviewer works through the document in sequence rather than at the same time, since the DOCX Editor supports track changes for review, not simultaneous co-editing. That still removes the need to reload DOCX files or send edits back and forth over email.
Accessibility
The DOCX editor is designed to be WCAG 2.2 Level AA compliant, for an accessible UI that expands reach of your application to even more users. Accessibility features include enhanced keyboard navigation, improved contrast ratios and screen reader compatibility.
Best of all, as an SDK, the DOCX Editor provides set-it-and-forget-it accessibility compliance, as Apryse does the work of keeping accessibility features current with each update.
Track Changes for Document Review
With DOCX Editor, word processing workflows stay inside your application instead of routing through a separate tool. Track changes record insertions and deletions by author, with a timestamp on each change, so reviewers see exactly what happened without opening a second app. Reviewers accept, reject, or filter changes one at a time; the DOCX Editor supports this sequential review, not simultaneous editing. Users save the result as DOCX or PDF.
Here’s the current API for reviewing tracked changes programmatically:
officeEditor.acceptTrackedChange() no longer exists. Use TrackedChangeManager for accept, reject, and navigation instead.
Getting Started
Read on for the step-by-step How-to guide, and/or watch the How-to video below embedded below.
Install WebViewer Component
DOCX Editor is built on top of Apryse’sWebViewer. WebViewer offers viewing and editing not just of DOCX documents but also PDFs, images, CAD, video, and many other formats.
To install WebViewer in your React application, you can either do so by cloning our React sample repo on Github, or by following our guide.
If you are installing through npm (node package manager), you can simply run:
npm i @pdftron/webviewer In trial mode, all features are available except a watermark on output documents.
Enable DOCX Editing Functionality in Your React App
Once you have WebViewer up and running, go to the constructor of WebViewer and pass the option to enable Office editing:
WebViewer({
...
initialMode: WebViewer.Modes.DOCX_EDITOR,
}, viewerElement) Once you have that, restart your app and you should see DOCX editor.
“Why native OOXML matters” callout
DOCX files store formatting, tracked changes, and comments as XML structures. An editor that round-trips content through JSON or HTML loses that structure on save. The DOCX Editor reads and writes native DOCX XML directly, so nothing gets rebuilt or approximated on export. Read more about native OOXML architecture.
How Apryse Compares to Other React DOCX Libraries
react-doc-viewer and docx-preview are common choices for showing DOCX files in a React app, but neither edits them. Here’s how the three compare:
Load a DOCX Document in Your React App
To load an existing DOCX document in your React web app, you can do so either through initial document property:
or through load document API:
Save a DOCX Document in Your React App
To save the edited or newly created DOCX, use the getFileData API:
Discover how to create a JavaScript-based DOCX editor with client-side capabilities. Learn to build, edit, and save documents efficiently in this comprehensive guide.
Next Steps
Now that the DOCX Editor is integrated into your React application, you can customize the editor’s appearance and interface to match your app’s design. See the DOCX Editor comparison for how this fits against other DOCX editing approaches.
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