How do I render a Word document (.doc, .docx) in the browser using JavaScript?
How do I render a Word document (.doc, .docx) in the browser using JavaScript?
Question
I have successfully done code to display a PDF file in the browser instead of the "Open/Save" dialog. Now, I'm stuck trying to display a Word document in the browser. I want to display a Word document in Firefox, IE7+, Chrome etc.
Can any one help? I am always getting the "Open/Save" dialog while displaying the Word doc in browser. I want to implement this functionality using JavaScript.
Accepted Answer
No browsers currently have the code necessary to render Word Documents, and as far as I know, there are no client-side libraries that currently exist for rendering them either.
However, if you only need to display the Word Document, but don't need to edit it, you can use Google Documents' Viewer via an <iframe> to display a remotely hosted .doc/.docx.
<iframe src="https://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://remote.url.tld/path/to/document.doc&embedded=true"></iframe>
Solution adapted from "How to display a word document using fancybox".
Example:
However, if you'd rather have native support, in most, if not all browsers, I'd recommend resaving the .doc/.docx as a PDF file Those can also be independently rendered using PDF.js by Mozilla.
Edit:
Huge thanks to fatbotdesigns for posting the Microsoft Office 365 viewer in the comments.
<iframe src='https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/embed.aspx?src=http://remote.url.tld/path/to/document.doc' width='1366px' height='623px' frameborder='0'>This is an embedded <a target='_blank' href='http://office.com'>Microsoft Office</a> document, powered by <a target='_blank' href='http://office.com/webapps'>Office Online</a>.</iframe>
One more important caveat to keep in mind, as pointed out by lightswitch05, is that this will upload your document to a third-party server. If this is unacceptable, then this method of display isn't the proper course of action.
Live Examples:
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The answers by Brandon and fatbotdesigns are both correct, but having implemented the Google docs preview, we found multiple .docx files that couldn't be handled by Google. Switched to the MS Office Online preview and works likes a charm.
My recommendation would be to use the MS Office Preview URL over Google's.
https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/embed.aspx?src=http://remote.url.tld/path/to/document.doc'
There seem to be some js libraries that can handle .docx (not .doc) to html conversion client-side (in no particular order):
https://github.com/lalalic/docx2html — docx to html, most elements are supported
https://github.com/mwilliamson/mammoth.js — supports headings, lists, tables, endnotes, footnotes, images and text boxes
https://www.npmjs.com/package/docx2html — Converts DOCX documents to HTML in the browser or nodejs
https://github.com/artburkart/docx2html — apparently, works in the browser
Note: If you are looking for the best way to convert a doc/docx file on the client side, then probably the answer is don't do it. If you really need to do it then do it server-side, i.e. with libreoffice in headless mode, apache-poi (java), pandoc or whatever other library works best for you.
I think I have an idea. This has been doing my nut in too and I'm still having trouble getting it to display in Chrome.
Save document(name.docx) in word as single file webpage (name.mht) In your html use
<iframe src= "name.mht" width="100%" height="800"> </iframe>
Alter the heights and widths as you see fit.
ViewerJS is helpful to view/embed openoffice format like odt,odp,ods and also pdf.
For embed openoffice/pdf document
<iframe src = "/ViewerJS/#../demo/ohm2013.odp" width='700' height='550' allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen></iframe>
/ViewerJS/ is the path of ViewerJS
#../demo/ohm2013 is the path of your file want to embed
Native Documents (in which I have an interest) makes a viewer (and editor) specifically for Word documents (both legacy binary .doc and modern docx formats). It does so without lossy conversion to HTML. Here's how to get started https://github.com/NativeDocuments/nd-WordFileEditor/blob/master/README.md