MS Word viewer

For years I used MS Word Viewers to open the occasional document that I
received so I could view the contents.

Now I can no longer find a MS viewer that will open MS documents I am
running Windows 8.1 and can not afford the cost of a MS subscription of
MS office.

Is there a MS viewer that will run on Windows 8.1 that will open MS word
files.

Keith Nuttle wrote:

For years I used MS Word Viewers to open the occasional document that I
received so I could view the contents.

Now I can no longer find a MS viewer that will open MS documents I am
running Windows 8.1 and can not afford the cost of a MS subscription of
MS office.

Is there a MS viewer that will run on Windows 8.1 that will open MS word
files.

Sure. It's the office suite called LibreOffice, and it is free. People
have been mentioning it for years.

http://www.libreoffice.org/

--
-bts
-This space for rent, but the price is high

On Tue, 5 Apr 2016 18:54:34 -0400, Keith Nuttle
wrote:

For years I used MS Word Viewers to open the occasional document that I
received so I could view the contents.

Now I can no longer find a MS viewer that will open MS documents I am
running Windows 8.1 and can not afford the cost of a MS subscription of
MS office.

Is there a MS viewer that will run on Windows 8.1 that will open MS word
files.


Sure. Get it he https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/891090

Keith Nuttle wrote:
For years I used MS Word Viewers to open the occasional document that I
received so I could view the contents.

Now I can no longer find a MS viewer that will open MS documents I am
running Windows 8.1 and can not afford the cost of a MS subscription of
MS office.

Is there a MS viewer that will run on Windows 8.1 that will open MS word
files.

You are likely to need an Office Compatibility Pack,
something that converts .docx to .doc.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/office.aspx

Couple that with an ancient viewer (.doc), and you're all set.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/downl...ails.aspx?id=4

The whole set would be:

FileFormatConverters.exe
wordview_en-us.exe
PowerPointViewer.exe
ExcelViewer.exe

I fired up a canned Win8 VM and installed those,
then opened a .docx, .pptx, .xlsx.

http://s21.postimg.org/x83lhx17r/W8viewer.jpg

Only one word of warning. The set doesn't "play well"
with LibreOffice present on the same C: drive. That
broke my viewers.

Note that .docx, .pptx, and .xlsx are ZIP containers,
with a bunch of stuff inside. You might find XML files
inside the ZIP, plus images and other stuff. All to make
a document. So in cases where a document refuses to translate
or view properly, you can use 7ZIP as a "nitpicker",
and pick out the component parts from the document,
and potentially get enough from that to do the
job. Without actually opening the document the
normal way. I extract images that way sometimes.

Paul

On 04/05/2016 06:09 PM, Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
Keith Nuttle wrote:

For years I used MS Word Viewers to open the occasional document that I
received so I could view the contents.

Now I can no longer find a MS viewer that will open MS documents I am
running Windows 8.1 and can not afford the cost of a MS subscription of
MS office.

Is there a MS viewer that will run on Windows 8.1 that will open MS word
files.

Sure. It's the office suite called LibreOffice, and it is free. People
have been mentioning it for years.

http://www.libreoffice.org/




+1

On 4/5/16 7:07 PM, philo wrote:
On 04/05/2016 06:09 PM, Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
Keith Nuttle wrote:

For years I used MS Word Viewers to open the occasional document that I
received so I could view the contents.

Now I can no longer find a MS viewer that will open MS documents I am
running Windows 8.1 and can not afford the cost of a MS subscription of
MS office.

Is there a MS viewer that will run on Windows 8.1 that will open MS word
files.

Sure. It's the office suite called LibreOffice, and it is free. People
have been mentioning it for years.

http://www.libreoffice.org/




+1

Except that none of the office suites that mention compatibility are
100% compatible. The more complex the word document, the more likely to
fail.


--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 44.0
Thunderbird 38.0.1
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On 04/05/2016 08:18 PM, Ken Springer wrote:
On 4/5/16 7:07 PM, philo wrote:
On 04/05/2016 06:09 PM, Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:



snip



+1

Except that none of the office suites that mention compatibility are
100% compatible. The more complex the word document, the more likely to
fail.





Libre has made a lot of improvements over the years and is now quite
good. The OP said he simply needs a viewer and Libre should be fine for
that.

On Tue, 5 Apr 2016 23:09:59 -0000 (UTC), "Beauregard T. Shagnasty"
wrote:

Keith Nuttle wrote:

For years I used MS Word Viewers to open the occasional document that I
received so I could view the contents.

Now I can no longer find a MS viewer that will open MS documents I am
running Windows 8.1 and can not afford the cost of a MS subscription of
MS office.

Is there a MS viewer that will run on Windows 8.1 that will open MS word
files.

Sure. It's the office suite called LibreOffice, and it is free. People
have been mentioning it for years.

http://www.libreoffice.org/



Note that although LibreOffice might be a good choice, he asked for an
*MS* viewer, and that is *not* what LibreOffice is.

On 04/06/2016 08:46 AM, Wolf K wrote:


snip

So I suspect that Word is very bad at cleaning itself up after edits.

I've also occasionally seen problems with bullets, which are
semi-automated. Which is why I don't use them, the programmers/designers
assume a too simplistic classification model which rarely works with
real-life data.

Unrequested tips:

a) All doc editors will open RTF (Rich Text Format) with no problems. If
the doc includes images, Print To PDF. If you want universal
readability, use RTF or PDF.

b) If you Save As plain text, all formatting is removed. Makes the text
itself easily readable. Obviously. :-)

HTH



If one is working an a group project and a document is passed back and
forth between several people, it's important that all use the same word
processor, even if using MS-Word...all versions should be the same.


At one time Open Office /Libre Office was quite a bit different from
"Word" but now there is little difference...but it's not identical.


Since the OP was just looking for a viewer it should not matter though

On Wed, 06 Apr 2016 09:46:41 -0400, Wolf K wrote:

On 2016-04-05 21:24, philo wrote:
[...]
Libre has made a lot of improvements over the years and is now quite
good. The OP said he simply needs a viewer and Libre should be fine for
that.

Agreed. I prefer WordPerfect or Open Office, which usually work just
fine. No viewing/display problems with only fonts formatted. The trouble
starts with any kind of formatting beyond that.

snippe
HTH

I liked WordPerfect from the DOS 5.1 version days. It did many things
it's contenders couldn't, particularly it's array of printer drivers. The
function key assignment however was non-intuitive to say the least.
In windows the formatting codes have been retained, I like them, maybe
other do not.
It's always a mystery to me how Microsoft can come in late and usurp
existing applications, eventually putting them out of business.

On Tue, 5 Apr 2016 23:09:59 -0000 (UTC), Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:

Sure. It's the office suite called LibreOffice, and it is free. People
have been mentioning it for years.

http://www.libreoffice.org/

Overkill, but it'll do the job (for free).

--
s|b

s|b wrote:

Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:

Sure. It's the office suite called LibreOffice, and it is free. People
have been mentioning it for years.

http://www.libreoffice.org/

Overkill, but it'll do the job (for free).

Yes, overkill for reading a simple document, but my reply was also
addressing the OP's statement of "and can not afford the cost of a MS
subscription of MS office." which you snipped.

So with LibreOffice, he gets his "office" at no cost.

--
-bts
-This space for rent, but the price is high

On 4/6/2016 4:28 PM, Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
s|b wrote:

Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:

Sure. It's the office suite called LibreOffice, and it is free. People
have been mentioning it for years.

http://www.libreoffice.org/

Overkill, but it'll do the job (for free).

Yes, overkill for reading a simple document, but my reply was also
addressing the OP's statement of "and can not afford the cost of a MS
subscription of MS office." which you snipped.

So with LibreOffice, he gets his "office" at no cost.

The OP uses WordPerfect because of the access to the reveal codes.
These codes have saved me many hours in troubleshooting formatting
problems. In MS Word when things really go bad, the only solution is to
copy the document to an ASCII word process. Then rebuilding the
formatting of the document from the ASCII text.

On Wed, 6 Apr 2016 15:56:22 -0400, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2016-04-06 11:27, philo wrote:
If one is working an a group project and a document is passed back and
forth between several people, it's important that all use the same word
processor, even if using MS-Word...all versions should be the same.

I would certainly mandate that in a work setting, if I were still
working for living. But you can't do it in a volunteer group or club (I
belong to several), nor among friends and family. That's why I recommend
RTF and/or PDF as universal formats.


Ditto, although I would prefer rtf to pdf (for editing purposes) and
plain text to either of them.

On Wed, 6 Apr 2016 18:55:41 -0000 (UTC), Dave C
wrote:

On Wed, 06 Apr 2016 09:46:41 -0400, Wolf K wrote:

On 2016-04-05 21:24, philo wrote:
[...]
Libre has made a lot of improvements over the years and is now quite
good. The OP said he simply needs a viewer and Libre should be fine for
that.

Agreed. I prefer WordPerfect or Open Office, which usually work just
fine. No viewing/display problems with only fonts formatted. The trouble
starts with any kind of formatting beyond that.

snippe
HTH

I liked WordPerfect from the DOS 5.1 version days. It did many things
it's contenders couldn't, particularly it's array of printer drivers. The
function key assignment however was non-intuitive to say the least.
In windows the formatting codes have been retained, I like them, maybe
other do not.


I still greatly prefer WordPerfect. It's even better today than it was
in the DOS days.


It's always a mystery to me how Microsoft can come in late and usurp
existing applications, eventually putting them out of business.


WordPerfect 6.0 was a very buggy release, and it was then that many
people started switching to Microsoft Word.