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Is there any lightweight software for viewing Microsoft Word documents?

RedTheReader

RedTheReader

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 18, 2019
532
1,312
Hi all,

I have to read Word documents frequently in college, and I suspect they won't be disappearing when I graduate. MacOS does an excellent job at opening most file types with Preview, to the point where I actually think it's the best part of the OS. Unfortunately, it can't handle the docx format, so I have to end up either using the spacebar preview, or opening things in Pages. The problem is, Pages isn't exactly a light program. I don't want multiple instances of it using up system resources when I just want to view the content, not edit it. It boggles my mind that Microsoft doesn't have a solution to this yet; it's as if Photoshop didn't standardize PNGs and instead encouraged everyone to have Photoshop on their machines to view psd files. Though I suppose this isn't entirely Microsoft's fault; people just choose not to export their finished works as PDFs.

So, does anyone have any suggestion for a 3rd party application that lets me view these files without hogging memory?

Thanks.
 
RedTheReader said:
Hi all,

I have to read Word documents frequently in college, and I suspect they won't be disappearing when I graduate. MacOS does an excellent job at opening most file types with Preview, to the point where I actually think it's the best part of the OS. Unfortunately, it can't handle the docx format, so I have to end up either using the spacebar preview, or opening things in Pages. The problem is, Pages isn't exactly a light program. I don't want multiple instances of it using up system resources when I just want to view the content, not edit it. It boggles my mind that Microsoft doesn't have a solution to this yet; it's as if Photoshop didn't standardize PNGs and instead encouraged everyone to have Photoshop on their machines to view psd files. Though I suppose this isn't entirely Microsoft's fault; people just choose not to export their finished works as PDFs.

So, does anyone have any suggestion for a 3rd party application that lets me view these files without hogging memory?

Thanks.
Click to expand...
Apple Pages......and it is free!
 
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RedTheReader said:
Hi all,

I have to read Word documents frequently in college, and I suspect they won't be disappearing when I graduate. MacOS does an excellent job at opening most file types with Preview, to the point where I actually think it's the best part of the OS. Unfortunately, it can't handle the docx format, so I have to end up either using the spacebar preview, or opening things in Pages. The problem is, Pages isn't exactly a light program. I don't want multiple instances of it using up system resources when I just want to view the content, not edit it. It boggles my mind that Microsoft doesn't have a solution to this yet; it's as if Photoshop didn't standardize PNGs and instead encouraged everyone to have Photoshop on their machines to view psd files. Though I suppose this isn't entirely Microsoft's fault; people just choose not to export their finished works as PDFs.

So, does anyone have any suggestion for a 3rd party application that lets me view these files without hogging memory?

Thanks.
Click to expand...
How complex are these .docx files? Do they have tables or graphics?
 
RedTheReader said:
The problem is, Pages isn't exactly a light program.
Click to expand...

tmoerel said:
Apple Pages......and it is free!
Click to expand...
I've read that TextEdit can open docx files. However, if the DOCX document is complex, the document may not render correctly in TextEdit. Haven't tried it myself since I usually just use a text editor since most of my text documents are just plain txt, so I don't have many docx files to open, and those I do I just use Microsoft Word (provided by my employer).
 
rpmurray said:
I've read that TextEdit can open docx files. However, if the DOCX document is complex, the document may not render correctly in TextEdit. Haven't tried it myself since I usually just use a text editor since most of my text documents are just plain txt, so I don't have many docx files to open, and those I do I just use Microsoft Word (provided by my employer).
Click to expand...
Apple Pages does open them though. I use it daily to open quite complex .docx. It is not perfect but perfectly readable. Just try it out. It is either already installed on your mac or available for free on the App store.
 
tmoerel said:
Apple Pages does open them though. I use it daily to open quite complex .docx. It is not perfect but perfectly readable. Just try it out. It is either already installed on your mac or available for free on the App store.
Click to expand...
Yeah, but the OP said they don't want to use Pages. They want something more lightweight for only viewing, and TextEdit is lighter and may suit their needs.
 
Even the included TextEdit does a fair job with .docx documents. I don't know how accurately it will show charts or graphics that might be part of a document, but most .docx should be readable with TextEdit..

Or, there is the free Bean word processor - which is also pretty good with Word docs.

Bean: a macOS word processor

Bean: a macOS word processor
bean-osx.com bean-osx.com
 
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rpmurray said:
I've read that TextEdit can open docx files. However, if the DOCX document is complex, the document may not render correctly in TextEdit. Haven't tried it myself since I usually just use a text editor since most of my text documents are just plain txt, so I don't have many docx files to open, and those I do I just use Microsoft Word (provided by my employer).
Click to expand...
That text in your post #6 doesn't appear (for some reason), until I choose to reply - but, I agree with your point about TextEdit, and it is a very small app for what the OP might want.
-- OK, back with a reload, reads properly now. sorry for the strange post...
 
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rpmurray said:
Yeah, but the OP said they don't want to use Pages. They want something more lightweight for only viewing, and TextEdit is lighter and may suit their needs.
Click to expand...
I think the point the OP made, was that Pages was not light, and used up resources. Now I'm not sure what they really mean by that, as it is, by virtue of being Apple made, quite light. My suggestion was a web based version of Pages, or even, if they are interested, a subscription to Microsoft 365 and use the web version there.
As they indicated, when they graduate, they'll find the computing world is predominately Microsoft based.
 
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Have you actually had real problems with Pages using excessive resources?

Today’s pages is about as “heavy” as, say, Aldus PageMaker was back in the ‘90s. By the standards of those days, that was pretty “heavy.”

But, by those same standards, an Apple Watch is at least a seriously big mainframe, if not an outright supercomputer. (PageMaker ran fine for most people on Macs that fit in the same part of Apple’s lineup as the MacBook Air does today.) And by today’s standards, Pages is nothing whatsoever; “heavy” applications these days are doing IMAX-resolution video editing or real-time 3-D photorealistic virtual reality rendering.

The cardinal sin of programming is premature optimization. You inevitably waste all the programmer’s very expensive resources on something that gains you almost nothing of the computer’s very cheap resources. But if you instead measure actual performance to discover where the bottlenecks actually are, you can focus on that and get real-world benefits (as opposed to Platonic ideal world benefits).

Just use Pages. If it actually bogs down, and if your computer was made after 2015, come back with details.

b&
 
Madonepro said:
I think the point the OP made, was that Pages was not light, and used up resources. Now I'm not sure what they really mean
Click to expand...
BenGoren said:
Have you actually had real problems with Pages using excessive resources?
Click to expand...
Right, perhaps I should clarify. Resources are a concern, but they tend not to be limiting. No, the real problem is that Pages, or indeed, any full-fledged word processor, is too visually cluttered and obnoxious. It's the equivalent of watching a television show in a full timeline video editor. It's stupid, and it's distracting. I don't want to do that, and I'm not sure why people are so comfortable with it.
 
Then, you are looking for a word processor that does not take over your (visual) life...

I did mention Bean a few posts up, which is almost stark, compared to others. (and free, too.)

And, TextEdit shows very minimal menus, and, is, in fact, a useable word processor, without a lot of the cutesy icons or pallete-style windows that you might find objectionable on other word-procs
 
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Madonepro said:
I think the point the OP made, was that Pages was not light, and used up resources. Now I'm not sure what they really mean by that, as it is, by virtue of being Apple made, quite light. My suggestion was a web based version of Pages, or even, if they are interested, a subscription to Microsoft 365 and use the web version there.
As they indicated, when they graduate, they'll find the computing world is predominately Microsoft based.
Click to expand...
The point I was making is that the OP had already pronounced Pages as DOA for the use case they had. I assumed that, from reading the requirements, they wanted something simple without all the cruft of a full blown word processor and had a small resource footprint. Cloud based solutions just add another layer of complexity, and what would you do if you didn't have internet access when you wanted to view a file? Occam's razor, keep it simple.
 
RedTheReader said:
Right, perhaps I should clarify. Resources are a concern, but they tend not to be limiting. No, the real problem is that Pages, or indeed, any full-fledged word processor, is too visually cluttered and obnoxious. It's the equivalent of watching a television show in a full timeline video editor. It's stupid, and it's distracting. I don't want to do that, and I'm not sure why people are so comfortable with it.
Click to expand...
Um … Pages in its default view has almost exactly the same “clutter” as Preview — which is almost none save a minimalist toolbar / sidebar. And if you turn off the sidebar (click “Format” in the toolbar) and the toolbar (View menu => Hide toolbar, second from the bottom), you’re left with just the document itself and the top menu. Enter fullscreen, and even that’s gone, leaving the document, only the document, and nothing but the document.

And on my first-generation M1 MacBook Air, it opens in a single bounce of the dock icon. I don’t remember it taking much more than that on my long-since-gone very-old Intel MacBook Pro that the M1 replaced.

In short: Pages IS a minimalist MS Word document viewer (and editor), it’s fast, it’s lightweight, it’s free, and the reason there isn’t really any competition for it is that it’d be an insane amount of work to come up with something half as good, if you’re lucky. Plus, it’s also, arguably, a better word processor for most people than Word itself. (And that minority who “needs” Word actually need a true publishing platform, which Word is miserable at pretending to be — but that’s another story.)

So … what, exactly, is the problem you’re having with Pages? Can you include screenshots, or stopwatch timings of how it’s slow, or … ? Because you’re really not going to find anything better, so you might as well fix whatever the problem is.

b&
 
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DeltaMac said:
Even the included TextEdit does a fair job with .docx documents. I don't know how accurately it will show charts or graphics that might be part of a document, but most .docx should be readable with TextEdit..

Or, there is the free Bean word processor - which is also pretty good with Word docs.

Bean: a macOS word processor

Bean: a macOS word processor
bean-osx.com bean-osx.com
Click to expand...
I second this. Bean is a fantastic app, really lightweight.
 
The problem with non-Microsoft apps such as Pages, LibreOffice etc. is that their compatibility with Office files is not 100%. Yes, they will display them, sometimes even perfectly, but most often they look somewhat different, with incorrect formatting and other imperfections. The best and only free solution is using actual MS Office. It’s not super lightweight but their memory footprint is not that huge either and once you close them, nothing runs in the background (which cannot be said of the likes of Photoshop). Still not everybody realizes that Office is actually free for viewing Office files. Just download the apps from Mac App Store and if you don’t have an active subscription, they will work as document viewers with no ability to create and edit documents.
 
Bean is probably not going to work for anyone looking to view Word docs that have images, tables, footnotes or otherwise complex layouts.

From the Bean product page:

Bean transparently imports and exports these formats:
• .doc format (MS Word '97, minus images, margins, and page size)...see note below
• .docx format (Word 2007, minus images and some formatting)...see note below
• .odt format (OpenDocument, minus images, margins, and page size)

Bean can export all of the above formats to these formats:
• .html (web page format)
• .pdf
• .doc compatible (with images intact)

Technical Notes
Bean should not be considered a replacement for Word, or any other word processor designed for complex documents involving, for example, citations or complex page layout. Having said that, formatted text is imported and exported quite well by Bean. Bean cannot import images from .doc or .docx documents, but can save images in .doc files.

The bottom line is that if you're not willing to use a full-blown word processor (such as Pages, OpenOffice, MS Office, etc.), or a free cloud-based solution like Google Docs or Microsoft's own Word (available free on the web), then you're simply going to have to accept some (if not many) limitations.
 
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MacGizmo said:
The bottom line is that if you're not willing to use a full-blown word processor (such as Pages, OpenOffice, MS Office, etc.), or a free cloud-based solution like Google Docs or Microsoft's own Word (available free on the web), then you're simply going to have to accept some (if not many) limitations.
Click to expand...
Agreed. Also, not only is Word availabe free on the web, the desktop (and mobile) apps are free to use with limited (mostly read only) capabilities.
 
Madonepro said:
I think the point the OP made, was that Pages was not light, and used up resources. Now I'm not sure what they really mean by that, as it is, by virtue of being Apple made, quite light.
Click to expand...
Exactly. Seems like the OP is going out of their way to come up with a problem. If your Mac can't handle opening Pages, that points to bigger issues. :rolleyes:
 
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ignatius345 said:
Exactly. Seems like the OP is going out of their way to come up with a problem. If your Mac can't handle opening Pages, that points to bigger issues. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
When I open Pages and have only a blank document it's taking up 330MB of RAM and the application itself takes up 642MB of storage. I remember the days when MacWrite fit on an 800K floppy and ran in less than 2MB of RAM (and that's with the OS also running in that same RAM). Page is definitely bloated compared to TextEdit which runs in less than 50MB of RAM and takes up only 3MB of storage, assuming it does what the OP wants to use it for.
 
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