CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#browserms-office
Bill O.
Bill O.

Reputation: 21

How to View Microsoft documents using WinForms WebBrowser

I need to be able to view a file (.doc, docx, .pdf, .txt,.....ect) in the System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser (C# Visual Studio 2008) on a system that does not have office installed on it. How do I do that? Can it be done? I viewed many of the documentation that are out there regarding this and most all have office installed already. I just need to be able to preview the documents, not modify them.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1422

Answers (2)

Judah Gabriel Himango
Judah Gabriel Himango

Reputation: 60021

No, you can't do this using just the WebBrowser.

If you've seen the WebBrowser open a Word doc before, it's because Office was installed on the system, and it was using the Office ActiveX control to view it.

Some alteratives:

Programmatically upload the document to Office Live, then navigate the web browser to it. Office Live now has "Word in a web browser" functionality, check it out here.

Upvotes: 2

John Saunders
John Saunders

Reputation: 161783

You can't do this in general. The way a browser displays an Office Document (or any other kind of document) is to run the application that created it - in this case, Office.

There are various tools which can render Office documents as HTML. You may be able to use those. One that I see mentioned frequently is Aspose, though I have not used it.

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions