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Office Web Viewer: View Office documents in a browser

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Do you have Office documents on your website or blog that you want your readers to view even if they don't have Office installed?  Would you rather view a document before downloading it?  To give your audience a better experience, try the Office Web Viewer.

Do you have Office documents on your website or blog that you want your readers to view even if they don’t have Office installed?  Would you rather view a document before downloading it?  To give your audience a better experience, try the Office Web Viewer.

What is the Office Web Viewer?

It’s a service that creates Office Web Viewer links.  Office Web Viewer links open Word, PowerPoint or Excel files in the browser that would otherwise be downloaded. You can easily turn a download link into an Office Web Viewer link to use in your website or blog (e.g., recipes, photo slide show, a menu, or a budget template).

Some benefits of the Office Web Viewer include:

  • You don’t need to convert Office files for the web (e.g., PDF, HTML).
  • Anyone can view Office files from your website or blog, even if they don’t have Office.
  • It keeps eyes on your website or blog, because readers don’t need to download the file and they stay in the browser.
  • One link will work for computers, tablets, and mobile phones.

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How to get started

To use Office Web Viewer, click this link: http://officewebviewer.com

Then copy and paste the document’s URL in the text box. It looks like this:

How to view Office documents in a browser.

To make the URL yourself, you can use the link below, where <Document Location> is a URL to the document.

http://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=<Document Location>

Note: the <Document Location> needs to be URL encoded, and the document must be publicly accessible on the internet.

Here are a few examples of documents in the Office Web Viewer:

If your document is an Office document and is publicly accessible on the internet, then you are good to go.  Office Web Viewer links are a great alternative to download links because your readers don’t need a special program to view your documents, and they don’t have the interruption of leaving their browser.

Microsoft

The Microsoft 365 Marketing Team

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