Microsoft Word Viewer
is a discontinued freeware program for Microsoft Windows that can display and print Microsoft Word documents.[2] Word Viewer allows text from a Word document to be copied into clipboard and pasted into a word processor.[3] The last version made was compatible with Word 2007. Since then, it has been superseded by Office Online and free mobile versions of Word.
Stable release---------------------
v11.8169.8172 SP3 / September 27, 2007; 10 years ago
Operating system
Windows 2000 SP4, Windows Server 2003 SP1, Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2, Windows 7
Available in
36 languages[1]
List of languages
English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese (Hong Kong SAR), Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian
According to the license terms of the Microsoft Word Viewer, the software may be installed and used only to view and screen print documents created with Microsoft Office software. The software may not be used for any other purpose. Users may distribute the software only with a file created with Microsoft Office software to enable recipient to view and print the file.[4]
Microsoft has announced that Word Viewer will be retired in November 2017, the program will no longer receive security updates or be available to download.[5]
Format support
Microsoft Word Viewer supports:
binary Word documents (.doc)
Office Open XML documents (.docx, .docm)
Rich Text Format (.rtf)
Text files (.txt)
HTML (.htm, .html) and MHTML (.mht, .mhtml)
Word XML format (.xml)
WordPerfect v5.x and v6.x files (.wpd)
Microsoft Works documents (.wps)
For viewing Office Open XML documents, Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats must be installed.[2]
History
Word Viewer 97-2000 was released on 17 March 1999. It opens documents that are created with Word 97, Word 2000 and Word for Mac v4.x and later.[6] It was available for Windows in 16-bit and 32-bit versions. It can display Word documents in Internet Explorer 3.x and later.[3]
Word Viewer 2003 was released on 15 December 2004. It added support for Word XP and Word 2003.[citation needed]
Word Viewer v11 was released on 26 September 2007. Combined with Office Compatibility Pack for Word, it supports Office Open XML document format found in Word 2007 and later.[1]
Development of the product is stopped ever since. In the meantime, Microsoft has made other ways of reading Office documents available: Word Web App (a freeware version of Microsoft Word) as well as WordPad (a native component of Windows) in Windows 7 and later can create, view or edit Office Open XML documents (.docx). WordPad also supports Rich Text Format (.rtf) and text files (.txt).[7][8]
No versions for any other operating system besides Windows were ever released.
See also
Microsoft Excel Viewer
Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer
List of word processors
Comparison of word processors
References
"Word Viewer". Download Center. Microsoft. 26 September 2007. Retrieved 31 March 2013.
^ a b "How to obtain the latest Word Viewer". Support. Microsoft. 27 November 2012. Retrieved 31 March 2013.
^ a b "Description of the Microsoft Word Viewer 97-2000". Support. Microsoft. 19 January 2007. Retrieved 31 March 2013.
^ "LICENSE TERMS FOR MICROSOFT SOFTWARE - MICROSOFT OFFICE WORD VIEWER 2003". Microsoft. Archived from the original on 2009-03-12. Retrieved 2016-12-23.
^ "Word Viewer to be retired in November, 2017". Office Updates. Retrieved 2017-01-20.
^ "Microsoft Word Viewer". Helper applications. The Institution of Engineering and Technology. 20 October 2011. Retrieved 31 March 2013.
^ "Windows 7: The Top 10 Hidden Features". PC Magazine. Ziff Davis. 30 September 2010. Retrieved 3 April 2013.
^ "Using WordPad". Windows portal. Microsoft. Retrieved 3 April 2013.