Microsoft Word Viewer

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.

Microsoft Word Viewer
Word Viewer 2007 running on Windows 8
Developer(s)Microsoft
Initial releaseMarch 17, 1999 (1999-03-17) (Word Viewer 97-2000)
Final release
v11.8169.8172 SP3 (Word Viewer 2007) / September 27, 2007 (2007-09-27)
Operating systemWindows 2000 SP4, Windows Server 2003 SP1, Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2, Windows 7
Platformx86
Size24.5 MB
Available in36 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
TypeDocument viewer
LicenseFreeware

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]

In November 29, 2017, Microsoft had announced that Word Viewer would be retired on that month, no longer receive security updates nor be available to download, and recommended using Office Online, Word Mobile, and Office desktop apps for viewing and printing documents free of charge.[5] Microsoft Office 2003 and newer versions are trialware and can also be used for viewing and printing during or after the trial period.

Format support

Microsoft Word Viewer supports:

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 2002 and Word 2003.

Word Viewer 2007 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 has stopped ever since. In the meantime, Microsoft has made other ways of reading Office documents available, either through Word Online as well as WordPad (a native component of Windows) in Windows 7 and later, which can create, view or edit Office Open XML documents (.docx) alongside Rich Text Format (.rtf) and text files (.txt).[7][8]

No versions for any other operating system besides Windows were ever released.

See also

References
  1. "Word Viewer". Download Center. Microsoft. 26 September 2007. Retrieved 31 March 2013.
  2. "How to obtain the latest Word Viewer". Support. Microsoft. 27 November 2012. Retrieved 31 March 2013.
  3. "Description of the Microsoft Word Viewer 97-2000". Support. Microsoft. 19 January 2007. Retrieved 31 March 2013.
  4. "LICENSE TERMS FOR MICROSOFT SOFTWARE - MICROSOFT OFFICE WORD VIEWER 2003". Microsoft. Archived from the original on 2009-03-12. Retrieved 2016-12-23.
  5. "Word Viewer to be retired in November, 2017". Office Updates. Retrieved 2017-01-20.
  6. "Microsoft Word Viewer". Helper applications. The Institution of Engineering and Technology. 20 October 2011. Archived from the original on 7 September 2015. Retrieved 31 March 2013.
  7. "Windows 7: The Top 10 Hidden Features". PC Magazine. Ziff Davis. 30 September 2010. Retrieved 3 April 2013.
  8. "Using WordPad". Windows portal. Microsoft. Retrieved 3 April 2013.
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