Does a MAC Word Viewer exsist?

L

LuDean Marvin

Howdy,

I am curious if there is anything like a MAC Microsoft Word Viewer out there
somewhere. I can find them for PC's, but so far no luck for the MAC.
 
M

Michel Bintener

Hi,

Microsoft does not provide a Word viewer for Mac OS X. There are a number of
solutions for opening Word documents, however, ranging from a commercial
Word viewer called icWord (
http://www.panergy-software.com/products/lp/we/gn_op.html) to opening the
Word files with Mac OS X's TextEdit, which can read Word documents more or
less well. There are plenty of solutions in between, so if you need some
more advice, post back.
 
C

CyberTaz

Just a thought, but if you simply need to provide the docs for viewing
(regardless of OS) you could also generate PDFs for distribution.

Regards |:>)
 
M

mmmmark

LuDean Marvin said:
Howdy,

I am curious if there is anything like a MAC Microsoft Word Viewer out
there somewhere. I can find them for PC's, but so far no luck for the
MAC.

Another useful option while searching through .docs online, such as academic
abstracts, is to the use this FREE Safari/Firefox plug-in:
http://www.schubert-it.com/pluginword/ .

I believe it displays text only, but it is quite handy and will help you
instantly determine if you need to download the file or not.

-Mark
 
L

LuDean Marvin

I had been considering just such an option. I have been posting lecture
outlines on the web for my students to use. One of them only has a MAC, so
I am exploring the options. The Adobe Reader is a behemoth download for a
dial-up connection. And the pdf files themselves take up alot of space that
a Word file does not, and I have little space to spare.
 
L

LuDean Marvin

That is more or less what I had in mind, though a free one would be better.
My students are rather short in the pocket books. Are there any others I
can look into? Thanks.
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

TextEdit is free. And built-in. It comes on every Mac. You can even edit and
re-save as Word .doc.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.
 
C

Chris Ridd

I had been considering just such an option. I have been posting lecture
outlines on the web for my students to use. One of them only has a MAC, so
I am exploring the options. The Adobe Reader is a behemoth download for a
dial-up connection. And the pdf files themselves take up alot of space that
a Word file does not, and I have little space to spare.

PDFs are usually much smaller than Word files. Macs running OS X 10.3 or
later can read PDF files without any additional software.

(NB the computers are "Macs", not "MACs" :)

Cheers,

Chris
 
M

Michel Bintener

Why not save your lecture outlines in RTF format? Any decent word processor
should be able to read that file format. Or, if there's no formatting
whatsoever in your outlines, you might even go all the way and save them as
pure text files to guarantee an almost universal compatibility. Apart from
that, most computers should have Adobe Reader on them, and, as Chris has
pointed out, Mac OS X comes with an application called Preview that can
display PDFs. If you don't want to change your habits and keep using the
Word format, just follow Paul's advice: tell your student that TextEdit can
open and save Word files, and it's especially suitable for rather simple
documents.
 
C

CyberTaz

The Adobe Reader is a behemoth download for a
dial-up connection.

It isn't needed if the user is running OS X, which includes a program
called Preview that reads PDFs with no problem.
And the pdf files themselves take up alot of space that
a Word file does not, and I have little space to spare.

Not sure I understand this... PDFs saved for something other than high
quality commercial printing with hi-res images should typically be
rather small - especially if this is simply an outline.

That being the case, how about saving the outline docs as RTFs instead
of DOCs? That should be no problem at all, & the suggestions about
TextEdit (again, included with OS X) are certainly viable as well for
either file format.
One of them only has a MAC

Can you reword this to read as "Only one of them has a Mac"?...
Otherwise, we Mac users might have to take umbrage :)

Regards |:>)
 
C

Corentin Cras-Méneur

Paul Berkowitz said:
TextEdit is free. And built-in. It comes on every Mac. You can even edit and
re-save as Word .doc.

Only in Tiger though.

Corentin
 
C

Corentin Cras-Méneur

John McGhie said:
Yes. It's called "TextEdit" and it comes pre-installed with Mac OS X :)

TE from Tiger can read/write Word formats. PPrevious versions couldn't
(or was it with Panther...).

Pages, and OpenOffice will also open Word files.

Corentin
 
C

Corentin Cras-Méneur

Michel Bintener said:
If I remember correctly, Panther's TextEdit can do that as well. I think
Tiger added Word XML support.

You're probably right. I know it was one of the new features of a recent
version of the System and I must have gotten it confused between Panther
and Tiger.


Corentin
 
J

John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]

And 10.3.9 :)


Only in Tiger though.

Corentin

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410
 

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