Word's first general release was for MS-DOS computers on May 2, 1983. It was not well received, and sales lagged behind those of rival products such as WordPerfect. Word made full use of the mouse, which was so unusual at the time that Microsoft offered a bundled Word-with-Mouse package. Although MS-DOS was a character-based system, Word for DOS was the first word processor for the IBM PC that showed actual line breaks and typeface markups such as bold and italics directly on the screen while editing, although this was not a true WYSIWYG system because available displays did not have the resolution to show actual typefaces.

However, as with most DOS software, each program had its own, often complicated, set of commands for performing functions that had to be learned (for example, in Word for DOS, a file would be saved with the sequence Escape-T-S; the only similar interface belonged to Microsoft's own Multiplan spreadsheet), and as most secretaries had learned how to use WordPerfect, companies were reluctant to switch to a rival product that offered few advantages. Many concepts and ideas were brought from Bravo, the original GUI word processor developed at Xerox PARC, to the original Mac version, which was the first Word version to use a graphical user interface, and the later Word for Windows. Bravo's creator Charles Simonyi left PARC to work for Microsoft in 1981.