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Filed under: Windows, Office

Word Reader 5.0 lets you read DOC, DOCX files without MS Office

Word Reader 5.0
While there are dozens of excellent word processors available for Windows, Microsoft Word is the de facto standard. Whether you have Microsoft Office and/or Word or not, odds are you have to deal with Word documents every now and again when someone sends you a file attachment. If you don't have Word, there are a number of ways to deal with those documents. Word Reader 5.0 isn't necessarily the best, but it's one of the simplest.

Basically, Word Reader will let you open and read DOC, DOCX, RTF, TXT, or HTML files. You can't create or edit files. Just open and read them. It handles formatting pretty well, although it seems to have issues importing some images.

Microsoft also offers a free Word 2007 viewer for Windows, but the Microsoft viewer weighs in at 25MB, while Word Reader 5.0 is just a 5MB download. So if you've got limited bandwidth, this could be the way to go.

Alternately, you could install OpenOffice.org or Abiword, or use an online office suite like Google Docs or Zoho Writer to open Word files. Or you could use online file conversion service Zamzar to convert the docs to a format you can read.

[via Technix Update]

Filed under: Office, Google

Google Docs adds support for Word and Excel 2007 documents

Google Docx
Google now lets users import .docx or .xlsx files into Google Docs. In other words, next time someone sends you a document created in Word 2007 you don't need to convert it into a format that your aging copy of Microsoft Word 2000 can handle. You can just load it up in Google Docs and read or edit the document online.

This brings the complete list of file formats supported by Google Docs to DOC, DOCX, HTML, TXT, RTF, XLS, XLSX, ODS, CSV, TSV, TSB, PPT, and PPS.

Of course, Zoho Docs has supported Office 2007 files since last year. Zoho Docs also lets you export files in those formats, while Google Docs will only let you import Office 2007 files.

Filed under: Business, Windows, Macintosh, Office, Productivity, Web services, Freeware

Converting .docx documents to .doc

Zamzar free file conversion
Thanks Microsoft. No seriously, thanks. As far as I can tell, the new .docx default document format in MS Word 2007 and 2008 (for Mac) does nothing to make my life easier, but has certainly made it more of a pain. Although my office predominantly uses Office 2003, our users are starting to receive documents saved in the newer .docx format, and are unable to open or edit them. Since I happen to be running Office 2007 and 2008 on my machine (it's a Mac with VMWare Fusion for running Windows), I get to play the role of "mister file converter".

Well, no longer.

Thanks to our pals over at TUAW, I can now redirect my office mates to Zamzar's free online file converter. We've written about Zamzar before, but this is the first I had heard that it supports Office file formats.

Filed under: Text, Productivity, Social Software, web 2.0

Zoho Writer updated, now compatible with DocX files

Online office suites are gaining some serious steam, and Zoho Office (along with Google Docs) remains one of the innovators in the market. Today, Zoho has released an update to Zoho Writer, their online word processing application.

The biggest highlight of the update is the added support for Microsoft's OOXML file format, mercifully titled DocX. In case you didn't know, whenever you save a Word document, PowerPoint file, Excel spreadsheet, etc...in Office 2007 (or 2008 on a Mac), the default format is DocX.

Zoho Writer now allows you to export your documents as a DocX file – though it looks like importing a DocX file is still a short time away.

Other notable feature updates include:
  • Thesaurus (available in ten languages)
  • Groups: Share documents with multiple people without having to enter in multiple email addresses each time you share a document.
  • Enhanced support for endnotes, footnotes, headers, and footers.
It looks like the line between online word processing and desktop word processing just got a little thinner. How about you, constant reader? Have you made the leap to online word processing? Sound off below.

[via TechCrunch]

Filed under: Windows, Office, Microsoft

Read Office 2007 documents without installing Office 2007

Word Viewer
Microsoft Office 2007 may include a bunch of nifty updates from previous versions of Microsoft's office suite. But it also includes new document formats for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. In other words, it causes a bunch of headaches when an Office 2007 user sends files to Office 2003 or OpenOffice.org users.

There are a bunch of services that will convert the new .xlsx, .docx, and .pptx files to old fashioned .xls, .doc, and .ppt files. But Microsoft has a solution for anyone who just needs to read documents without editing them.

This summer Microsoft release a compatibility update allowing Office 2003 and earlier customers to open the new file formats. It turns out that update also lets you use the free Word Viewer 2003 to read .docx files. Now Microsoft has also released PowerPoint Viewer 2007 with support for .pptx files.

There's no update to Excel Viewer 2003 yet, but we're guessing it's just a matter of time.

[via ActiveWin]

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