Excel Viewer 2007

How To View Spreadsheets Without Excel 2007

If you don't have Microsoft Excel 2007 installed, but you need to view an Excel spreadsheet, all is not lost. Enter Excel Viewer 2007. With this utility you can open, view and print Excel spreadsheets. Additionally, you can copy data from the excel spreadsheet to other applications. I've tested Excel Viewer successfully on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Window 7 with no problems.

Installing Excel Viewer 2007 is simple: download it here and then run the install program. Once installed, you should see the program when you click Start > All Programs. When you run Excel Viewer, you are immediately taken to the File Open dialogue box where you must navigate to and then select the Excel spreadsheet you want to view.

When the spreadsheet opens, you'll see a cutdown version of the Excel 2007 Ribbon. This is because all the commands related to editing the spreadsheet have been removed: you are able to view and print the spreadsheet only.

As you can see, there is a limited number of tabs offering the following categories:

• Office Document - open and print functions.
• Edit - don't be fooled, you can't actually edit the spreadsheet. However, you can copy data, find and go to.
• Page Setip - allows you te set up page level properties such as orientation (portrait or landscape), and the print area.
• Window - use this to jump to other Excel 2007 spreadsheets you have open.

When tabbing through your open sessions (alt-tab) the icon representing Excel Viewer is slightly different to the standard one representing Excel 2007. Because only enquiry functiionality is available, a pair of glasses (to view!) appears beneath the standard Excel icon.

Another place where functionality is restricted is the Office button menu. Here, you can only open spreadsheets, print them, check for updates to the Excel Viewer and close documents. Like Excel 2007, the right hand pane displays recently opened documents. Interestingly, the Open for Editing command will open the spreadsheet in Excel 2007 (not the viewer) if you have it installed. Taking this option will close the spreadsheet in the viewer program and open it in Excel itself.