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Use Gmail to view Office files online
This weekend
my girlfriend and I were visiting my mom. My girlfriend needed to view a PowerPoint file someone had sent her, but my
mom's really, really old PC doesn't have PowerPoint and, believe it or not, is too old to run the free PowerPoint
viewer. I thought for a moment and then remembered that whenever someone e-mails a document in a common format to my
Gmail account, a handy "View as HTML" link shows up next to the "Download" link. "Forward it
to your Gmail account," I told her, and lo and behold a few seconds later she was able to view the file (albeit
with some funky formatting) right in Firefox.Yesterday the clever folks at Lifehacker printed basically the same tip I gave my girlfriend: If you're traveling and need to read a document but don't have the right app for it, send it to yourself using Gmail. It's a simple idea, but can be a lifesaver, and it works like a charm with PDFs, Office, and OpenOffice.org files.
Comments
5
Subscribe to commentsChrisMar 20th 2006 2:33PM
Adobe also has a little known service that's useful for those pesky PDF files. Send the file as an attachment to pdf2txt@adobe.com or pdf2html@adobe.com and they'll send you back the appropriate file (either text or html) via email.
Jordan RunningMar 20th 2006 2:45PM
Great tip, Chris!
J.T. MillMar 20th 2006 5:56PM
You guys always seem to post these tips they day I need them. Way to go guys!
shadekhMar 21st 2006 1:24AM
As always, a number of extensions exist for viewing pdf as html in firefox. i often use the pdfdownload extension as i work extensively with pdf files. it allows me to download it or view it as html. I believe you can simply "open" the file via firefox in case you have a local file.
claudioMar 21st 2006 4:16AM
you can use the same tip to view password protected documents (i tried it with a PDF and it works).
try it.