Viewing XPS files

[ToddLC]

My environment: Windows Vista Home Premium x64, Office 2007.

I've installed the Save as PDF or XPS add-in in Office. This allows me to
save a file in Word in XPS format just fine. If I select "Open file after
publishing", I get bounced into the XPS viewer without a problem. However,
if I attempt to open an existing XPS file directly with Word, I get an error
message concerning problems with the file contents. Should I be redireded to
the viewer or is this currently expected behavior?

A couple of other related questions:

* The add-in does not appear on the list of Office add-ins in Word Options.
Is this a problem with this add-in or some Word bug?

* When I first installed the add-in and saved and then requested a preview
of the file, I was asked to allow installation of the .NET framework, which I
did. I thought this framework was already a part of Windows Vista. Am I
mistaken?

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi Todd

My environment: Windows Vista Home Premium x64, Office 2007.

I've installed the Save as PDF or XPS add-in in Office. This allows me to
save a file in Word in XPS format just fine. If I select "Open file after
publishing", I get bounced into the XPS viewer without a problem. However,
if I attempt to open an existing XPS file directly with Word, I get an error
message concerning problems with the file contents. Should I be redireded to
the viewer or is this currently expected behavior?

It's not a Word file after all, not anymore. If you save as a PCL or PS
file (by printing to file through a different printer driver), you would
not expect Word being able to open the result, either.

IOW, it doesn't come as a surprise that Word chocks if you instruct it
to open the file. Telling Windows (through an explorer, not sure how
this thing is called under Vista ) to open it should be fine, and
_then_ I would not expect Word to be in the loop at all. This should
send the file directly to the appropriate viewer, if it's correctly
registered with the OS.

2cents
Robert