Microsoft Word Viewer

Microsoft Word Viewer is a freeware program for Microsoft Windows. It can display and print Microsoft Word documents. 

Since November 2017, it is no longer supported or updated by Microsoft. The last version made was compatible with Word 2007. Microsoft recommend using Office Online, Word Mobile, and Office desktop apps for viewing and printing documents free of charge. 

The license terms of Microsoft Word Viewer allow the software to be installed and used only to view and screen print documents created with Microsoft Office software. The software may not be used for any other purpose. Users may distribute the software only with a file created with Microsoft Office software to enable recipient to view and print the file.

Format support
Microsoft Word Viewer supports:
binary Word documents (.doc)
Office Open XML documents (.docx, .docm)
Rich Text Format (.rtf)
Text files (.txt)
HTML (.htm, .html) and MHTML (.mht, .mhtml)
Word XML format (.xml)
WordPerfect v5.x and v6.x files (.wpd)
Microsoft Works documents (.wps)

For viewing Office Open XML documents, Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats must be installed.

History
Word Viewer 97-2000 was released on 17 March 1999. It opens documents that are created with Word 97, Word 2000 and Word for Mac v4.x and later. It was available for Windows in 16-bit and 32-bit versions. It can display Word documents in Internet Explorer 3.x and later.

Word Viewer 2003 was released on 15 December 2004. It added support for Word 2002 and Word 2003.

Word Viewer 2007 was released on 26 September 2007. Combined with Office Compatibility Pack for Word, it supports the Office Open XML document format. This document type is supported in Word 2007 and later.

Development of the product has stopped. Microsoft has made other ways of reading Office documents available. These include Word Online and WordPad. WordPad is a native component of Windows from Windows 7 and later. It can create, view or edit Office Open XML documents (.docx) alongside Rich Text Format (.rtf) and text files (.txt).

References

Word Viewer