Aug082012

How can I open a Office document in Gmail without saving it first?

john sasso asks:

When I try to open an Office document (when using Chrome/Gmail) I only see the option to view or download. I want to be able to open it in Office first without downloading the file. I used to do this in Outlook so why can’t I now?


Browser: Chrome 21
System: Windows 7
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9 Answers -

0 votes

ferdinan Sitohang

August 8, 2012

You can do it by choose download, after that it will ask you whether to save it first or open with a program. Just choose open with a program and choose any office program, it will display as you wish, and not store directly to your documents folder.

0 votes

Suman Acharya

August 8, 2012

view as HTML
Scan and download
these two are options. view is the option i choose to read without download.

Suman Acharya

these two option are just under the attachment file. ferdinan’s solution may work better for you.

August 8, 2012
0 votes

Âdil Farôôq

August 8, 2012

Select download it will give you an option to open it using office program.

0 votes

Min Shum

August 8, 2012

Use “View in Google Docs”. Any office document sent as an attachment to your email can be viewed directly from the Cloud without having to save it to your PC.

The document, however, will be saved to your recent document list on your Google Docs account

0 votes

EL

August 8, 2012

You have to download it. You can open it without downloading it in Outlook because when Outlook pulls in messages, it downloads the attachments automatically.

Once you click download in Gmail, you can open it in Office.

0 votes

Christopher Harlan

August 9, 2012

Well, you can always view it in HTML. However, you should be able to open the document in Google Docs and view it from there without even having to download it. And if you do decide to download it, you can just choose not to save it.

0 votes

Oron

August 9, 2012

Several good answers below, so I’d just like to provide an overview. There are really two options:
1. Have the file opened in the cloud (e.g. by GoogleDocs/Drive) and displayed as a web page.
2. Have the attachment downloaded to your hard disc and opened by Word. This can be done explicitly (you download the file, save it to a known place and open it) or implicitly (Outlook or your browser saves the file to a “temp” folder and opens it), but either way, the file will be downloaded first and then opened.

If you choose to follow the second option, I would suggest that on the whole it is better to save the files explicitly, because then 1) you can access them again if necessary without having to download a second copy and 2) your hard disc will be less cluttered with copies of temporary files.

0 votes

kathe

October 7, 2012

but i used to be able to print a doc without saving it to my desktop furst….why can’t i do it now?

0 votes

SM Mhaisale

October 24, 2012

1) Click on settings
2) Go To the bottom of the page where is an option “advanced settings”
3) Go to downloads
4) De-select Ask where to save each file before downloading

I hope this helps.

Capt SM