DOTX files are template files created by Microsoft Word, starting with Word 2007, utilizing the Office Open XML (OOXML) standard. These templates are crucial for maintaining corporate or personal document consistency across multiple users or projects. Unlike standard DOCX files, which hold the final content, DOTX files store the foundational structure, including custom styles, page layouts, headers, footers, boilerplate text, and default settings. When a user initiates a new document using a DOTX template, Microsoft Word generates a fresh, untitled DOCX file, ensuring the integrity of the original template remains intact for future use. The underlying structure of the DOTX format is a compressed ZIP archive containing various XML files (like document.xml, styles.xml) and associated media. This architecture makes the format highly efficient, interoperable, and less prone to corruption than older binary formats. It is the modern replacement for the legacy DOT template format and is specifically designed for templates that do not contain macros (macro-enabled templates use the DOTM extension).