Google Docs Viewer is an online viewer which allows you to view PDF, Powerpoint presentation files, MS Word documents and TIFF images online right within your web browser.

Most people usually don’t  have MS Word  (viewer), Adobe Acrobat Reader or Microsoft Powerpoint  office software installed on their machine. In such a scenario, if somebody sends you a link to an MS Word Doc, a PPT file, a TIFF image or a PDF file, you can easily access it online through the Google Docs Viewer.

The following screenshots depict how it works.

Steps to view documents in Google Docs Viewer

Once you provide a link to your PDF, PPT, Doc, or TIFF file to Google Doc Viewer and click the “Generate link”  button, it will provide you with a number of browser friendly links to view and share your document. For example, you get links to  -

• Share the online PDF, PPT, Doc or TIFF document via email or IM.
• Embed the viewer displaying the document into your website.
• Provides a link which opens your document in Google Docs Viewer  in a separate web browser window.

A PDF document viewed in Google Docs Viewer

There is one caveat though – You cannot search within PDF documents you view inside Google Docs Viewer for the simple reason that each page is rendered as an image.

And if you have links inside your PDF document, they are also not recognized.

However, it is really convenient that you can use Google Docs viewer to quickly read documents online without leaving your web browser.

Check out another online document viewer (Zoho) which provides more options than the Google docs viewer.