Microsoft Word is a word processing program, frequently distributed as a part of Microsoft Office.
"... rtf documents can also be printed with 'exec write /p $filename'".
catdoc is recommend for .doc -> .txt.
What is catdoc? - Google is your friend: http://www.45.free.net/~vitus/software/catdoc/ , which states that catdoc reads Microsoft Word documents and outputs text.