- Published: 2/06/2010 at 12:00 AM
- Newspaper section: Database
Microsoft offers free viewers, plural. Its latest viewer for Microsoft Word documents is 24.5MB, huge. It gobbles up a huge ratio of your system memory.
The free and up-to-date TextMaker Viewer shows virtually any type of office document, and also offers instant conversion to PDF.
Office suite sellers TextMaker offer their viewer, weighing a measly 5.2MB. And it doesn't open one file format from Microsoft Office suite _ not one. No, it opens all the doc-type formats _ ever _ and all the subsidiary ones, such as the new docx, and the dot templates. And it also opens all the OpenOffice and Open Document formats, plus rich text, Pocket and Handheld PC documents, HTML (web pages) and of course simple txt files.
You will be asked to register. If you do, you will get the occasional promotional email from the SoftMaker folks at whatever email address you use to register.
Download and installation is rapid and smooth. Before starting, the program asks if you would like to make TextMaker Viewer the default program to open various types of files, so think carefully or choose none if you're not sure.
But there is a very nice choice to add the viewer to your right-click, ''Open With'' choices. This is an easy choice for me _ yes, please.
There is no problem getting any document into the program. You can open it with the usual File/Open mouse clicks, or you can drag it from the folder, desktop or whatever. I had no problem opening files directly from the Internet by handing TextMaker Viewer the full URL.
Once the document is loaded, you can do a lot of things with it, although you cannot edit (change) it in any manner.
You can copy, print, fax or email (with the proper software installed). And take this, Microsoft _ you can re-save the file directly in PDF format, which is even handier for passing on to others than giving them the file viewer.
Drawback? I found one. On some XP machines set up rigorously to run in English, Textmaker Viewer was not able to display some documents in Thai. Vista and Windows 7 computers that I tried showed Thai documents all right.
The download link and details are at www.officeviewers.com.
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About the author
- Writer: Wanda Sloan
- Position: Reporter
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