MS Word Viewer

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Until I moved to Win10, I used an MS application called Word Viewer. It was a great piece of software that allowed me to look at a Word document, without going through opening the full Word application. It now seems that it is no longer available. Anyone any ideas on a good replacement ?

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Word Viewer is still available from MS:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4

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From the download page:

“NOTE: The Microsoft Word Viewer is being retired in November, 2017. At that time, the Viewer will no longer be available for download and will no longer receive security updates. See Details for more information.”

--Joe

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”NOTE: The Microsoft Word Viewer is being retired in November, 2017. At that time, the Viewer will no longer be available for download and will no longer receive security updates. See Details for more information.”

True, but that’s 11 months from now and the viewer should still work after that. By then another solution can be found (like LibreOffice).

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Microsoft’s suggestion is*to download*the free Word mobile app on Windows 10 machines.

--Joe

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Microsoft’s suggestion is*to download*the free Word mobile app on Windows 10 machines.

I believe that you have to have Office 365 to use the “free” mobile apps.

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No. They are freely available. There may be limits without Office 365.

--Joe

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No. They are freely available. There may be limits without Office 365.

They are freely available but they won’t work unless you have a paid Office 365 account (unless my memory is wrong).

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To create or edit documents on devices larger than 10 inches you must have an Office 365 subscription.*Viewing should be fine.

--Joe

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To create or edit documents on devices larger than 10 inches you must have an Office 365 subscription.*Viewing should be fine.

Hhhmmm… I wonder if there has been a change in the UWA app. I installed the Word and Excel apps on my Surface Pro 3 in late 2015 and found that I couldn’t open a Word document and I’m pretty sure I found the same thing on my iPad (9.7″ screen). Might have to relook at this.

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I have the free Word app on my android phone and no Office 365 account. Although it prompted me to log in, it still worked with no issues. I’ve also found that I can open any Word document through the on-line version of Word, though I have to log into my Microsoft Live account. No costs involved there, either.

Kim

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I Upgraded a Vista Notebook to Win7 Home yesterday, doing the download of Win10 today. I had uninstalled the Trial version of Office Home and Student 2007 berfore doing the Win7 Upgrade so there was no Office on the Notebook. I just downloaded the Word Viewer, says it was for Word 2003 but offered to download and install the Office Compatibility pack to open the .docx file I tried. So basically, the Viewers work without having Office installed. But then if Office were installed why would the Viewers be needed?

Word Viewer download page had a note that it would be discontinued in November 2017, won’t receive any security updates [but probably won’t be disabled either].

The main thing with a Viewer is documents can be read and printed but not changed.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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@Berton,

Note that although you do not have the Office*suite installed you do have underlying components installed. You will get Office updates*as long as the product is supported.

If the Office suite was installed you would not need the viewer unless it was to support a client.

As I said above, Microsoft recommends installing Word Mobile. From their viewpoint since it is a Windows store app it will be updated automatically and therefore more stable and secure.

--Joe

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FWIW, you cannot use Mobile word to edit on an iPad unless you have an O365 account, so screen size alone is not the deciding factor.

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I quoted from the Windows*Store description. IOS and Android may have different feature sets. You’d have to check their descriptions in their respective stores.

--Joe

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Try using WordPad. It opens .docx files.

WordPad displays the following comment when I open some .docx files: “WordPad does not support all of the features of this document’s format. Some content might be missing or displayed improperly.”

Still, it should allow you to read most if not all of your Word documents.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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