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.

Google Docs Viewer supports all document formats that Google Docs supports, and is available online without the need for a Google account. This can be a very comfortable option, especially if a document needs to be viewed without a compatibly viewer available on the local system. But there are other benefits of opening documents directly online. Security comes to mind. Instead of having to open a pdf document in Adobe Reader, users can open it online to avoid any threats targeting Adobe’s product.

Lets take a look how documents can be viewed online using the service. The user first needs to open the Docs Viewer homepage. It offers a form at the top, a generate link button and some explanations at the bottom of the screen.

google docs viewer

All that needs to be done now is to copy and paste a direct document link into the form at the top and press the Generate Link button afterwards. Don’t get confused by the statement on the page that the service online supports PDF, PowerPoint and TIFF. You can feed it any document link that is supported by Google Docs. The service generates a clickable link and several copy and paste links to use in instant messengers, emails or to embed the viewer on a website.

The clickable link opens the document in Google Docs where the usual controls are available. As mentioned earlier, no account is needed to view the document online. Users with a Google account do however have access to additional features, like the ability to save the document in their Google Docs storage.

Google Docs Viewer is a solid option for users who want to view documents online. Other services offer a similar experience, for instance Zoho’s Online Viewer.

There are two options on how to use Google Docs Viewer:

The first option is to visit the Google Docs Viewer website. All it takes to view a document online is to paste its url into the web form at the page.

This will then display three links that can be pasted and embedded into websites. Probably the most interesting option is to view the document directly online.

This will open the document on a new page.

The second option is even simpler than that. All it takes is to append the url of the document to the basic Google Docs Viewer url:

http://docs.google.com/gview?url=

This will only display the document on a new page. The links to embed the document are not displayed with this method. Google Docs Viewer offers an interesting option to uses who want to quickly view a document without having to download it. It can also be helpful if no viewer for the document type is available on the local computer system.