AbiWord converter
Convert AbiWord .abw and .zabw documents to Word DOCX or PDF, keeping text, pictures, tables and footnotes.
.abw · .zabw
Format
About AbiWord
AbiWord is a small open-source word processor that was the default writer on many lightweight Linux desktops and on the One Laptop per Child XO. It saves .abw files, which are plain XML, and .zabw files, which are the same XML compressed with gzip. Pictures are embedded inside the XML as base64 data, so a single .abw carries everything it needs.
Because .abw is XML, a file is easy to recognise: it begins with an XML declaration and an abiword root element, or with the gzip bytes 1F 8B for .zabw. Word, Google Docs and Pages do not read either form.
In our tests text in Greek, German and French, embedded pictures, footnotes, tables, numbered lists and page-number footers converted to DOCX and PDF. Headings keep their look but lose their style names in DOCX, so Word's navigation pane and table of contents need the Heading styles applied again.
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Common AbiWord problems
A colleague cannot open an .abw attachment.
Send a DOCX from /convert/abw-to-docx, or a PDF from /convert/abw-to-pdf if they only need to read it.
Word's navigation pane is empty after converting.
Reapply Heading 1 and Heading 2 to the heading lines; the text already has the right size and weight.
List items read '1.Text' with no space after the number.
Select the list and reapply Word's numbering, or add a tab after the number in the list settings.