Is there a Word Viewer for Macintosh users?

[Guest]

Word Viewer 2003 supposedly allows people who do not have MS Word to view MS
Word documents. Question: Word Viewer 2003 works with Windows, but does it
also work with Mac operating systems?

Problem: how can I ensure that Mac users who do not have MS Word, can read
documents that I create in Word 97 for Windows?

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Sorry, slow response:

All Mac users with OS X will have TextEdit, which comes with the OS and on a
quick test here just opened a MacWord 2004 document for me, Mac and WinWord
use the same file format for versions 97 through 2004, so that should work.

If the Mac users have Pages (an Apple word processor), it should also open
Word files. AppleWorks (the older Apple word processor) doesn't appear to
work.

I don't think MS makes a Word Viewer or the Mac--but there is a NeoOffice/J
which might do a decent job (free OpenOffice derivative), and there's also
another program.
http://www.panergy-software.com/products/lp/we/gn_op.html

But most of these program will allow viewing and simple editing, but
probably not using Word features like forms or reviewing tools.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

PS to my previous:

The best way to distribute documents would be to convert them to PDF.
Recent Macs have native PDF viewing built-in, and you can send along a link
to free Adobe Reader for Windows users. You can google for free utilities
that will let you convert Word documents to PDF, e.g. CutePDF, pdf1995.

Even though TextEdit and Pages opened Word documents here on my Mac, those
were basic text-only documents, and I have no idea whether fancy features
like tables, pix, etc, would come across.