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 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 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.

Keith Nuttle wrote:

Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
s|b wrote:
Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
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

Wait. You are the OP. You didn't mention anything about WordPerfecct in
your initial post. Won't WordPerfect open and read Microsoft's ".doc"
files? (It's been centuries since I used WP, but seem to remember that it
did .doc files same as Word.)

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

On 4/6/16 3:32 PM, Keith Nuttle wrote:
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.

Before going the ASCII route, open Styles and Formatting, try the Clear
All option.


--
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 Wed, 6 Apr 2016 20:28:17 -0000 (UTC), Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:

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.

What I said.

--
s|b

s|b wrote:
On Wed, 6 Apr 2016 20:28:17 -0000 (UTC), Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:

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.

What I said.


LibreOffice has failed every "quality" test I've given it.

You get "half an office at no cost".

And what's that worth ? About what you paid for it.

*******

As an example, I tried to do an Excel-type chart project.
Accept a list of maybe 80,000 ordered pairs and graph it.

The program runs for about four or five minutes, and
then declares "Allocation Error". No, that's not a main
memory error. I thought that at first, but I started
searching for that string. Well, where does that
error actually come from ? The program uses OpenGL to
draw a simple fricken chart. It seems to rely on an
ATI OpenGL plugin that indicates how much free memory
the video card has left. This plugin does not work properly.
It's known that Microsoft broke it (as the video card
memory management model changes from OS to OS, and ATI
hasn't been able to fix the OpenGL plugin to do the
right thing in each case). It's not even clear that
NVidia has such a capability at all in their Windows OpenGL
(because, of course, it would get broken).

So I cannot make my simple chart in Windows with LibreOffice.
It errors out. I don't think I can disable the OpenGL path.

However, if I use Linux and LibreOffice, I'm able
to complete my chart.

So much for "half an Office"...

I've had double-printed characters in Writer. There's
a whole litany of sins. But you'll find out when
you get there. Don't let me spoil the surprise.

At least with the viewers, you'll be able to
convert docx, xlsx, pptx you get off the Internet,
into some other archival format, so you can at least
read them. I usually convert to PDF for
quick access. As long as the documents don't
do anything too wacky, the translator package
(FileFormatConverters.exe) will work OK.

Paul

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