How to open Word, Excel and PowerPoint online without Office

How to open Word online without Office: the short answer

Open the Office viewer, click "Open viewer," send the file and wait a few seconds: the document appears on screen with fonts, tables, charts and slides in place, the way its author laid it out. The file is opened on our server, displayed and discarded right after. It's read-only: nothing is changed. The tool has no download button of its own; what you see is your browser's PDF viewer.

When the viewer is the answer

It's the fix for when someone sends a .docx, .xlsx or .pptx and you're on a computer without Office, don't want to install a bulky program or just need to check an attachment before replying. What sets it apart from quick viewers is fidelity: the document is converted with LibreOffice, a free and widely used office suite, so the formatting comes out as in the original. It's also a way to check how an OpenDocument or RTF file looks before forwarding it to someone who only uses Office. For PDFs, photos, audio and video, which open without leaving your device, the guide is how to view files online.

Which files the viewer opens

• Word: .docx and .doc, with text, headings and images where they belong.
• Excel: .xlsx and .xls, with the tabs, the formula values and the cell formatting.
• PowerPoint: .pptx and .ppt, with each slide in its original order and look.
• LibreOffice OpenDocument: .odt (text), .ods (spreadsheet) and .odp (presentation).
• Other formats LibreOffice reads, such as RTF, CSV and LibreOffice Draw drawings; and PDF, which is displayed directly, with no conversion.
• Limit: 200 MB per file.

Step by step to view the document

1. Open the Office viewer page. It shows the notice that this tool sends the file to our server.
2. Click "Open viewer." A large window opens over the page with the message "Getting the viewer ready… this may take a few seconds"; that initial wait happens even with a small file.
3. Drag the file onto the window's upload area (or click to choose it) and wait while it shows "Abrindo documento..." (opening the document); files with many images or slides take a bit longer. The viewer's own screen is in Portuguese.
4. Read the document on screen. Use "Full screen" to read more comfortably and "Restore" to go back; "Close" ends the viewer.

What the viewer does (and doesn't do)

• Shows the document as a finished page: you can zoom, scroll vertically and horizontally, and fonts and colors are kept. For a wide spreadsheet, use the viewer's zoom and scroll sideways.
• Doesn't edit or fill forms, and has no download button of its own (your browser's PDF viewer may offer to save or print on its own): to keep the document as a PDF for sure, use the Office-to-PDF converter.
• Isn't a collaborative copy: the file is discarded after display, so every visit starts from scratch.
• Spreadsheets become pages: each tab is laid out in landscape, only with the area that has data, fitted to the page width; formulas show as values and there's no recalculating or editing.
• Works on a computer. On a phone, whether it opens depends on the browser; to read on a phone, convert to PDF.
• Completely blank pages (for example, a final paragraph Word pushes onto a new sheet) are removed before display; the viewer's thumbnail sidebar starts closed.

If you need not just to view but also to keep or send the document in a format that opens anywhere, the Word, Excel and PowerPoint to PDF converter produces a PDF from the same formats. It also runs on our server, with the same care to discard the file afterward. The steps are in how to convert Word, Excel and PowerPoint to PDF.

Common problems and limits

• "Getting the viewer ready" takes a while: the service may be asleep and needs a few seconds to wake up. It isn't the file size; wait.
• File too large: the limit is 200 MB and the window shows "Arquivo muito grande! Máximo: 200MB" (file too large). Compress the images in Word or split the presentation.
• Password-protected document: the conversion fails and the window shows "Não foi possível abrir este arquivo." (could not open this file); remove the protection before sending.
• Font differs from the original: if the document uses a font not installed on the server, a similar one is substituted.
• Didn't open on the phone: use a computer or convert the document to PDF.

Unlike most AtlasDocs tools, which run in your browser, this viewer opens the file on our server; that's what keeps it looking faithful to the original. The file is used only for display, in a temporary folder, and isn't stored.

Instead of installing Office or hoping the computer has a program that opens the attachment, you see the document ready on screen in seconds, the way it was made. If the old file (.doc, .xls, .ppt) needs editing, not just reading, see how to convert old .doc, .xls and .ppt files to .docx, .xlsx and .pptx.