I friend just IMed me a docx file that he wrote about his latest biking adventure. But I can’t read it. Why? I’m on my new dev machine and it doesn’t have Office. All I want to do is read this simple little file, but to do so I need to install Office. Call me lazy, but I don’t want to install Office for the umpteen time to just read a little file. (Yeah, I know eventually I’ll need to break down and install Office, but for now while I’m getting used to this new setup I like the simplicity of just the installed apps that I really.) What I would like is an online service that I can upload the docx file to and read it there.
I see I can convert it using Zamzar.com and I guess I could try emailing it to myself using Google GMail. I think it has a converter. However, both solutions involve emailing the document to myself. I just want to read it. I don’t need another copy of anything in my email.
I just checked out Writer at Zoho.com too. It’s an online Word processor that can import documents. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support docx files yet–at least that’s the error I’m getting–despite the fact that I read that Zoho supports this file type.
Hmmm.
And Microsoft has a free Word Viewer that I guess I could download. But if I go this route I might as well install Office.
All I want is a web service that lets me read a docx file. Does Microsoft’s Live group have something like this? I can’t find a reference to anything online. Seems like a natural.
If you need a quick and dirty solution, you can change the file extension to .zip, get into the archive, and read the XML in a text editor or web browser. Tags will be there, but at least you can read the text. IIRC, the text is in the “word” folder in document.xml, or something like that.