View presentations even without PowerPoint

May 14, 2010 10:35 GMT  ·  By

An application offered as a free download by Microsoft makes it possible for users to access PowerPoint presentations even if they don’t have the Office component installed on their machine. The latest version of the PowerPoint Viewer comes with support for presentations created with the RTM version of Office 2010 PowerPoint, according to the Redmond company. But, at the same time, PowerPoint 2010 Viewer RTM continues to play nice with content put together with older versions of PowerPoint such as Office PowerPoint 2007, 2003, and even 97.

“By installing the PowerPoint Viewer, you can open and watch PowerPoint presentations in all formats, no matter what computer you’re using. We’ve revamped our viewer to display PowerPoint presentations, including those created in 2010, in full-fidelity. This means that all the new transitions, videos, and effects will appear and behave exactly like they do in PowerPoint 2010,” Allen Huang, PowerPoint program manager, revealed.

In all fairness, the functionality provided by the PowerPoint 2010 Viewer is rather limited, but, at the same time, the download is free of charge. The viewer enables customers to view and print PowerPoint presentations, and even open password-protected files, and it offers the same quality user experience as the fully fledged Office component, but not more beyond that. The PowerPoint Viewer does not feature any sort of editing capabilities, for such options customers will need to turn to additional free offerings such as Office Web Apps. The following file extensions are supported and registered by the viewer: ppt, .pptx, .pptm, .pot, .potx, .potm, .pps, .ppsx and .ppsm.

“In order to display presentations with such high quality, you’ll need to install the PowerPoint 2010 Viewer on your computer. This is a departure from previous viewers, which run as standalone files. The Viewer has always been one of our most popular downloads (not just for PowerPoint, but for all of Microsoft), and we’ll be continuing to work on it and update it for our customers,” Huang added.

The PowerPoint 2010 Viewer RTM is available for download here.