It works with Word documents, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint slides

Apr 26, 2013 06:46 GMT  ·  By

A new extension designed to increase productivity has been added to the Web Store. Chrome Office Viewer allows you to view Word documents, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations directly in Google Chrome, just like PDF files.

At the moment it is in beta stage of development and can be installed only on Chrome Beta and higher (Windows and Mac). It works with DOC/DOCX, XLS/XLSX, and PPT/PPTX files.

The purpose is to increase the security of the user against malware attacks carried out through Office files. As such, all documents are isolated from the computer (sandboxed), which prevents malware from keeping an eye on your computer activity or steal private information.

Since Chrome Office Viewer (a ~25MB download) is in beta, you should expect quirks from it. In our case it showed that the documents had been downloaded, but it failed to display the content.