Viewing/Editing PPT, Doc, TIFF, etc. in your browser

Viewing/Editing files without having the required s/w or tools installed

Wonder what will you do in case you end up getting caught in a situation where none of the widely used tools/softwares (such as MS Office, Flash, File Viewers/Editors like Acrobat, etc.) are installed on a machine on which you need to at least view (or maybe edit if possible) some docs/files?

Well... until recently it was simply not possible, but the release of Google Docs has made it possible for many file types including PDF, Doc, etc. and now also for PowerPoint and TIFF. Now you only need a browser and an Internet connection and you can easily View/Print (and also Edit some of types) most of these popular file types.

This all can be done from your Gmail account straightaway. PDF Viewing was enabled way back in Dec 2008 and the most recent release from Google in this regard is PPT and TIFF file viewing.

'View as slideshow' option was there for PPTs, but now they have integrated the conversion technology into the same viewer which they are using for PDFs and TIFFs. Moreover, the new viewer supports a richer set of features like zoom in/out, printing PPT to a PDF doc, etc. Additionally, you no longer require a Flash plug-in installed on the machine. Below is the sample screenshot showing you view PPTs in the Gmail Viewer.


Most of the default TIFF viewers show only the first page, but the online viewer will not only show you all pages, but also give you an option to print the TIFF file to a PDF doc. Read the official Gmail blog post on this here.

Google Labs has already provided so much to be used for free and the list is still growing. For more details, visit the official Google Labs page, if not visited already.

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