What if you have received a Microsoft Word file (.doc or .docx) and want to open it to view it or to print it, but you don’t have Microsoft Word installed on your computer? Well, Microsoft provides a free download of its Word Viewer which can be used to view, print and copy Word documents, inspite of the fact that you don’t have Microsoft Word installed on your computer. You can download Word Viewer freely from this Microsoft page. Its download size is about 24.5 MB. In fact, you are even permitted to freely distribute this Word Viewer to other users without a document created in Microsoft Office subject to license terms for the Word Viewer.
Word Viewer allows you to open Word files in the following formats:
Moreover, to make Word Viewer compatible with Microsoft Office 2007 and to open the Word 2007 documents in the .docx format, you can also freely download and install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats (download size about 27.5 MB). This will enable Word Viewer to also open the following files
It may be pointed out that Word Viewer will allow you to view, print, and copy contents of the documents in the above formats (including .doc and .docx formats) to another program. However, it will not allow you to edit, save, or create a new document of the above formats. For editing, saving or creating a Word document (.doc or .docx), you’ll have to purchase Microsoft Office.
Of course, you can also use WordPad, which is a free software distributed with Windows (it is located in Start -> Programs -> Accessories menu on your Windows computer), to open or edit or save certain Word files, however, WordPad has very limited capabilities and many features of a Word document would not be compatible with it. On the other hand, Word Viewer supports most of the features of Microsoft Word documents, but then you have the limitations that you cannot edit, save or create a Word document in Word Viewer, as mentioned already.
It is pertinent to point out that Microsoft also allows 60 days’ free trial of some versions of its latest Office 2007. You can download it from this Microsoft page. So, if you have some urgent requirements, you can try using this trial version of Office 2007. This trial version of Office 2007 includes Word 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007 and OneNote 2007. However, I may point out that Microsoft allows you to launch this trial version only for 25 times during the aforesaid 60 days’ trial period. So, in case you are not interested to buy it at this juncture but still require it for some urgent work with Word 2007, you can download the trial version of Office 2007 and use it during the said period and complete your work within 25 executions. Of course, you can fall back upon the free Microsoft Word Viewer to open, view and print your Word documents in case your trial ends fast.
In fact, there are some other free options for creating, opening or editing Word documents, which I’ll be covering separately in another article.
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