Microsoft stops free Office viewers

On April 28, 2018, Microsoft will discontinue the Excel and PowerPoint viewers and the Office Compatibility Pack. Support for the Word viewer will end this month. Microsoft refers Windows 10 users to mobile apps, among other things.

As of April next year, the viewers for Excel, PowerPoint, and PowerPoint 2007 will no longer be available and will no longer receive security updates from that month. The same goes for the Office Compatibility Pack, which users could install to open documents created with newer versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The viewers for the Office documents have not received any new features for ten years.

Microsoft points out that all support for the Word viewer will end this month. The company announced this last year. The software maker recommends a number of alternatives to users without Office who still want to open the documents. The company directs users of Windows 10 PCs to the free Word Mobile, Excel Mobile and PowerPoint Mobile apps in the Windows Store. Contrary to what the name suggests, they also offer desktop view. Editing documents requires an Office 365 subscription.

Those who use Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 could put files in OneDrive, after which they can be viewed via Word, Excel and PowerPoint Online. Although Microsoft doesn’t mention it, there are also countless third-party programs and services that can open the documents, such as Google Docs, LibreOffice and AbiWord. However, there may be compatibility issues with the display.