Microsoft Word Viewer for Windows

Microsoft distributes freeware Windows utilities for viewing and printing Microsoft Word documents for those who do not have the full Microsoft Word product or a compatible word processor. The program may also be useful for those who have the Word product, to use as a simpler viewer for Word .DOC files, as this smaller utility takes less time to start up than the full MS Word product does.

There are versions of the software for Microsoft Windows 3.1 and for Windows 95/NT. The Windows 3.1 utility handles documents compatible with MS Word 6.0 while the Windows 95 utility handles those documents as well as documents using features introduced by MS Word 7, such as document links to sites on the Internet.

I've also provided here copies of Microsoft's instructions for the viewers for you to consider before downloading the products. Click on the Utility Name to read the "Instructions" file. Click on the File Size to download the software. The last item below is a document describing in more detail the Windows 3.1 version of the Word Viewer Utility.

You can also connect to the Microsoft Home Page for Word Viewer for the most up-to-date information about this utility.