An unofficial blog that watches Google's attempts to move your operating system online since 2005. Not affiliated with Google.

Send your tips to gostips@gmail.com.

February 28, 2015

Google Docs Viewer Page, No Longer Available

Google had a page that allowed you to quickly view documents online right from your browser. The Google Docs Viewer page was available at docs.google.com/viewer and drive.google.com/viewer. You could enter a document URL and Google generated a link to view it. This worked for a lot of file types: Microsoft Office files, PDFs, PostScript files and more.


While the page is no longer available as it redirects to Google Docs/Drive, you can still use the Google Docs Viewer. Paste this URL in a new tab:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=

and then paste the address of the document you want to view online. Here's an example:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://research.google.com/archive/bigtable-osdi06.pdf


The "embedded" parameter is still available: just add &embedded=true to the URL and the viewer will use an embedded mode interface. This is useful for embedding documents (use the <iframe> tag).

{ Thanks, +Sushubh Mittal. }

17 comments:

  1. Thankyou so much! My old embedded view stopped working and now I know why :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. Internal links not working in a PDF for example my table of content.

    ReplyDelete
  3. How to preserve internal links in PDF document in that case?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry.. its possible locate text using adding other parameter ?. May be possible search text in online pdf ?

      Google APP Script can help for these labour ?

      Thanks...

      Delete
  4. i am using google api url to display my files on my website.i wanted to know whether my content is uploaded on the google server or google deploys some kind of executable to display my files

    ReplyDelete
  5. My old embedded view stopped working and now I know why.Thank you for your great post.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I get a preview of the code of my docs : is there no way to link to a traditional graphical preview of a google doc ? It loads much faster than the editor mode.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I am getting error that Refused to display '<<--MYURL-->>' in a frame because it set 'X-Frame-Options' to 'SAMEORIGIN'. Is there any one else facing same issue.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I am now getting a 204 [no content] error for all documents. Has this fully been depreciated?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am getting intermittent 204s as well. About 30% of the page loads result in a 204. Upon refresh they typically load. Very frustrating

      Delete
  9. Hi,
    This is my url and its seems not working , showing error "Whoops"
    https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://preview.adviserlogic.com/ab762d17-3d2a-4ecf-95e8-684f76ecc649_lipikaPreviewtest.doc

    ReplyDelete
  10. Can I use google docs viewer in commercial usage ? how much does it cost ?

    Thanks for any help

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hi
    I use the embed document plugin for my wordpress website. It used to work perfectly while embeding pdf and poweroint but its currently not loading those pages. What could be the problem? See http://www.academicscope.com/management-risk-lecture/

    ReplyDelete
  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  13. If you are saying build a URL every time you add a file instead of just clicking add, no, that's not that helpful. Thanks anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Very nice post.really I apperciate your blog.Thanks for sharing.keep sharing more blogs.

    แคมฟรอก

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.