Google Docs Viewer Gets Microsoft Excel, Adobe Photoshop Support

One of the main points of criticisms of Google’ online document viewer Google Docs Viewer was that several widely used formats were not supported by it. Among the unsupported formats were Microsoft Excel files, both .xls and xlsx to be precise, the new PowerPoint format .pptx, Adobe Photoshop .psd files and many lesser used but still popular file formats.

Google on Friday announced that they have added support for 12 new file formats in the Google Docs Viewer. Support for all file formats mentioned above have been added plus support for Apple Pages .pages, Adobe Illustrator .ai, Autodesk AutoCad .dxf, Scalable Vector Graphics .svg, Postscript .eps and .ps, TrueType .ttf and XMP Paper Specification .xps.

What does it mean for users of the service? First, all major Microsoft Office 2010 formats are now supported by Google Doc Viewer. Supported are both Microsoft Word (doc and docx), Microsoft Excel (xls and xlsx) and Microsoft PowerPoint (ppt and pptx) formats which can now be viewed online.

As usual, support for new formats has an impact on other Google services that make use of the Google Docs Viewer. Google’s email service Gmail for instance now offers a View link for those newly supported formats so that they can be viewed directly online without need for a desktop software supporting the file format.

The new file format can also be uploaded and shared directly in Google Docs. Google Docs Viewer is accessible right here. It can be used directly to view a document that is located on the Internet. Just paste the url of the document into the form and click the Generate link button for options to view the document online.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Sunday February 20, 2011 -
Tags:document viewer, google docs, google docs viewer, microsoft-office

Responses so far:

1. clint says:

   February 20, 2011 at 1:16 pm

   FYI the Adobe Photoshop file format is the .pas NOT .pdf

   Reply
2. clint says:

   February 20, 2011 at 1:17 pm

   *
   .psd for Photoshop

   Reply
   • Martin says:

     February 20, 2011 at 2:10 pm

     Thanks, corrected

     Reply
3. Joust says:

   February 21, 2011 at 12:47 am

   Looks like the Psd’s are dithered and ramped down to 256 colours (gif-like) for the previews at least. Bit disappointing.

   Reply
4. ilev says:

   February 21, 2011 at 11:03 am

   “criticisms of Google’ online document viewer Google Docs ” ?
   And which formats are supported by Office Live / Office 365 / Hotmail ? only Office formats.

   Reply
   • Martin says:

     February 21, 2011 at 11:29 am

     That has nothing to do with the criticism.

     Reply