Looking for a free way to read Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Visio, or Lync documents without buying the latest versions of these applications yourself?

Ms Access Reader For Mac

Similarly, if you own the Microsoft Office suite, do you share documents with those who don’t?

  • Central Access Reader 2.21 for Mac is free to download from our software library. This free software for Mac OS X was originally developed by Central Washington University. The latest installer occupies 80.6 MB on disk. The application lies within Productivity Tools, more precisely Office Tools.
  • NVDA version 2018.3.2. The NVDA screen reader can be downloaded free of charge by anyone. We do this because we believe everyone, especially the world’s poorest blind people deserve access to computers and a way out of poverty.
  • MDB Viewer can export your Access database to pretty much anything. Create Excel workbooks, SQLite databases, CSV files or SQL dumps. Use MDB Viewer to export to Apple Numbers, Filemaker, Bento, Open Office or even your Address Book. The online documentation includes step-by-step guides for exporting to many applications.

List of screen readers. Jump to navigation Jump to search. This article has multiple issues. Chrome OS or, with a speech processor, Linux, Mac, Windows Free ChromeVox is a screen reader for Chrome and Chrome OS. COBRA BAUM Retec Windows. Microsurf is a screen reader for Chrome NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) NonVisual Desktop Access.

Most office software power-users will be frustrated using a tool like this every day, due to the limited tools, but your situation may merit using one of these free, web-based viewers anyway. While you cannot edit documents in these free online interfaces, you can view, copy, or print Office documents authored by others – without having to commit to Office yourself.

Alternatives to Free Viewers: Free Office Software Suites and Apps

Before downloading a viewer, also consider the free Microsoft Office Online (Web Apps), which allow you to both read and perform a limited but effective range of editing. You will find Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote apps available for Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, and Android.

If someone sends you file permissions to a document housed on Microsoft’s cloud OneDrive, you can make edits using this web app.

Since both the viewers and the web apps are used in your browser, and therefore require an internet connection, the latter may make more sense to you as a solution.

There are other free or open source office software suites and apps available.

Word Viewer

Microsoft produced free viewers for its Word application up until 2003. Since then, Microsoft Office 2007, 2010, and 2013 have come to fruition; however, the viewer was not updated for each of these versions. Those interested in a free, online viewer for Word have just used the Microsoft Word 2003 Viewer, which worked fairly well for documents produced across all these versions.

Foxit Reader Free Download will let you download and install a most demanding tool into your PC. Its a completely stand alone setup file and compatible with all formats of windows i.e. Foxit reader for mac free. 32 bit and 64 bit. Foxit Reader is a little, exceptionally quick, and highlight rich PDF viewer which permits you to make (free PDF creation), open, view, sign, and print any PDF document. General Overview of Foxit Reader Whether you’re a purchaser, business, government office, or instructive association, you have to peruse, make, sign, and comment on (remark on) PDF reports and round out PDF shapes.

Luckily, now you can find a recent update that replaces the Microsoft Office 2003 Viewer. This download is a replacement for Word Viewer 2003 and all previous Word Viewer versions.

Download the Microsoft Word Viewer – Free!

Excel Viewer

Excel spreadsheets are among the most popular in the world, so it makes sense to have a solution that reads them as well as possible, even if you do not use Microsoft Excel on your device.

As with the Word Viewers, Excel Viewers have a new version that replaces the Excel Viewer 97, as well as Excel Viewers created earlier.

Download the Microsoft Excel Viewer – Free!

PowerPoint Viewer

PowerPoint Viewer has likewise been around for some time with a long-standing version, PowerPoint Viewer 97, being used for subsequent versions.

The most recent version of the PowerPoint Viewer has a few improvements and caveats. You can now opening password-protected Microsoft PowerPoint presentations (assuming you are privy to the password, of course). You will also notice a few features not available with this PowerPoint Viewer, including running macros while viewing a file or opening linked, embedded objects or files.

Download the Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer – Free!

Microsoft Visio Viewer

Even some Office power users have never heard of Microsoft Visio. This is a diagramming program for creating flow charts, organizational charts, or other visual representations.

While you cannot create or edit in-depth, you can do the following within the viewer: view files with extensions such as .vsd, .vsdx, .vsdm, .vst, .vstx, .vstm, .vdx, .vdw, or .vtx, use keyboard shortcuts and shortcut menus, view shape properties, adjust some layers settings, print some elements which fit to a given screen, and use some comment functions.

Since Visio is not typically included in some of Microsoft’s pre-packaged versions, it makes sense for businesses, for example, to buy one copy for the main user or a single computer device. This way, the Visio 2013 Viewer can be installed for free for others on the team to collaborate on.
Download the Visio 2013 Viewer

Microsoft Lync Server 2013 Whiteboard Viewer

This web conferencing tool offers a great way to share a record of online brainstorming and other presentations, even if those you were working with have not purchased access to Lync Server 2013. It converts the contents of your whiteboard session to HTML5, which is then viewed in a compatible browser.

You May Also Need This Compatibility Pack

Keep in mind that the viewers may not resolve some of the more intricate compatibility glitches you could run into. For that reason, Microsoft also offers its Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats.

Since each new program version tends to allow new file types, you may need this compatibility pack to properly upload the file you are interested in.

Download Pdf Reader For Mac

Always Read License Terms

As with all downloads, make sure to read license terms regarding fonts and other aspects of files you may be interested in copying or printing. Even though you have not purchased a full version of Microsoft Office, you are still agreeing to license terms for these viewers by using them. In fact, you cannot install or use the fonts on other devices at all, because you have not purchased the right to do so.

Rakesh Shewale writes with a common question about formatting compatibility:

I bought a new external HDD for my mac about a month ago and formatted it to Mac OS X Extended Journaled. Now it has my all data. But the problem is I can’t access this HDD from my PC which has Windows and Linux.

The trouble is that the drive is already formatted—this limits options, but it’s neither expensive nor impossible to proceed. Paragon is a long-time developer of cross-platform Mac/Windows disk mounting software, and its HFS+ for Windows 10 works on Windows releases all the way back to XP and Windows Server 2003 all the way through the present Windows 10 release. It’s $20, but also has a 10-day trial. HFSExplorer for Windows is free and updated for Windows 10, but requires the installation of the Java 5 or later runtime environment (JRE), which can introduce security issues unless you configure it carefully.

For Ubuntu users and those with Unix or Linux distributions that can support hfsprogs, you can turn to a detailed thread at Ask Ubuntu for advice on mounting in read-only mode or, with some additional effort, as read/write.

If you’re starting from scratch, you can initialize a drive as MS-DOS (FAT)—better known as FAT32—which is readable up to Windows XP with the Master Boot Record scheme. Or, as long as you’re using Windows 7 or later with a 64-bit PC, you can pick both ExFAT, a replacement that handles much larger files (4GB and larger), and GUID Partition Map. A drive formatted in this fashion can be swapped between a Mac and Windows PC.

However, you might choose instead a format you can use easily with OS X, Windows, and Linux. Topher Kessler wrote in Macworld in December 2014 about using FUSE to extend which formats a Mac can read and write, including the common Linux format ext3.

While ext3 can’t be mounted directly in Windows, you can turn to the free Ext2Fsd Project, which isn’t yet compatible with Windows 10 at this writing. It’s also an unsupported project—there’s no one to complain to about crashes or data failures. For supported software, Paragon’s ExtFS for Windows Professional ($20, works up through Windows 10) will do the trick.

Ask Mac 911

We’re always looking for problems to solve! Email yours to mac911@macworld.com including screen captures as appropriate. Mac 911 cannot reply to email with troubleshooting advice nor can we publish answers to every question.

Download Access On Mac

Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.