An extremely fast way to read Word documents

Apr 13, '07 07:30:02AM

Contributed by: billy.kessler

You may know that you can use Firefox (or your web browser of choice to browse your Mac's file system. In fact, you can do more than that, with a simple addition to the above tip. This is a solution for times when you need to read, but not edit, Word documents -- and this method is significantly faster than opening Word itself to do the reading. It works by installing a free Word reader plug-in for your browser, and making the appropriate bookmark pointing to your Documents folder:

  1. Download and install the Word Browser Plugin. See the Read Me file for instructions: just double-click to open the DMG file, then drag the plugin to /Library » Internet Plug-Ins (this is the system-level library, not your user's Library). Restart your browser.
  2. Point the browser to file:///Users/your_name/Documents -- note the three slashes. You'll see a list of your files; make a bookmark to this location; call it "Local Files" or something.
Now, pull down your bookmarks menu to Local Files. In Firefox at least, this will bring up a secondary menu of all the sub-folders (and then sub-folders of that, etc.). Note first how much quicker this is than navigating through the Finder. Then find a Word document. Whoosh! It comes up in the browser. Not all formatting is preserved, and you can't edit it, but for simple reading, it's easily 10 times faster than finding the document in the Finder, clicking it, and waiting around for Word to open.

This method is also quick to navigate to and open any other kind of file that the browser can handle. And of course, if you don't have Word, this will let you read .doc files that people send you, and is similarly faster than opening OpenOffice for reading. The intent of the plug-in is to read Word documents on the web, and it works fine for that, too. If you bring one of those up and want to save it or print it, click the icons in the upper left. Also note the enlarge/reduce buttons, and the search button. I've only tested this with Firefox (2.0.0.3), and this method does not work with Safari.

[robg adds: Note that the Word Browser Plugin is PowerPC only, so Intel users won't be able to use this tip unless they want to run their browser in Rosetta mode.]

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