Free Office Viewers from Microsoft to view Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio files

If you don’t have any Microsoft Office or Microsoft Visio software installed, you can download and use these free Viewers from Microsoft to view Office file formats like Excel, PowerPoint & Word or Visio files.

Free Office Viewers

1] ExcelViewer lets you open, view, and print Excel workbooks, even if you don’t have Excel installed. The Microsoft Excel Viewer is a small, freely redistributable program that lets you view and print Microsoft Excel spreadsheets if you don’t have Excel installed. The filename of the Excel Viewer is xlview.exe. The default folder location for the Excel Viewer on a 32-bit operating system is :\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12. The default folder location for the Excel Viewer on a 64-bit operating system is c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12.

The Microsoft Excel Viewer was retired in April 2018. It is no longer available for download or receive security updates. To continue viewing Excel files for free, Microsoft recommends installing the Excel mobile app or storing documents in OneDrive or Dropbox, where Excel Online opens them in your browser.

2] PowerPointViewer lets you view full-featured presentations created in PowerPoint with full fidelity. This viewer also supports opening password-protected Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. You can view and print presentations, but you cannot edit them in the PowerPoint Viewer.

3] Word Viewer lets you view, print and copy Word documents, even if you don’t have Microsoft Word installed. The Word Viewer, together with the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats, allows you open Word documents saved in the following formats:

• Word Document (*.docx)
• Word Macro-Enabled Document (*.docm)
• Rich Text Format (.rtf)
• Text (.txt)
• Web Page formats (.htm, .html, .mht, .mhtml)
• WordPerfect 5.x (.wpd)
• WordPerfect 6.x (.doc, .wpd)
• Works 6.0 (.wps)
• Works 7.0 (.wps)
• XML (.xml).

With Word Viewer and the Compatibility Pack, you can view, print, and copy document contents to another program. However, you cannot edit an open document, save a document, or create a new document.

4] MicrosoftVisioViewer allows anyone to view Visio drawings and diagrams, created with Visio 5.0 through Visio 2010, inside their Microsoft Internet Explorer  Web browser.

UPDATE: The Word Viewer, PowerPoint Viewer, and Excel Viewer have been retired. These Viewers will no longer be available for download or receive security updates. To continue viewing Office files for free, we recommend installing the Office apps or storing documents in OneDrive or Dropbox, where Word Online, Excel Online or PowerPoint Online opens them in your browser. For mobile apps, visit the store for your device.

You can also use Office Online to view these files.