Read PowerPoint and PDF Files Online with Google Docs Viewer

How do you read the contents of a PDF document or a PowerPoint Presentation if you don’t have the corresponding viewer installed on your computer or mobile phone? The immediate answer would be that you upload the file to a document hosting site like Scribd or SlideShare and read the contents inside the web browser.

Perfect but there’s a small problem. Most of these sites render documents using Flash and therefore the approach may not work on a mobile phone like the BlackBerry or an iPhone as they don’t support Adobe Flash.

If you are looking for alternative to Flash Paper, Google has released something new that might interest you. Called Google Docs Viewer, this is a web based service where you specify the URL of any PDF or PPT file and the viewer will let you read the contents of that document in any browser (desktop or mobile) as long as it supports JavaScript.

powerpoint slides in iphone

The Google Docs Viewer is also handy for web publishers as, instead of directly linking to PPT or PDF files, they can now link to the documents using Google Docs and site visitors are saved from the hassle of downloading the full document before reading on their computers.

Embed Documents Without Flash

If you like to embed a PowerPoint slideshow or PDF in your blog using Google Docs Viewer, just add “&embedded=true”  to the URL.

For instance, if the your document is located at http://abc.com/file.ppt, you can embed the file in any web page using the following code:

<iframe
  src="http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://abc.com/file.ppt&embedded=true"
  width="500"
  height="250"
  style="border-style:none;"
></iframe>
Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal

Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion

Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.

Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory

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Awards & Titles

Digital Inspiration has won several awards since it's launch in 2004.

Google Developer Expert

Google Developer Expert

Google awarded us the Google Developer Expert award recogizing our work in Google Workspace.

ProductHunt Golden Kitty

ProductHunt Golden Kitty

Our Gmail tool won the Lifehack of the Year award at ProductHunt Golden Kitty Awards in 2017.

Microsoft MVP Alumni

Microsoft MVP Alumni

Microsoft awarded us the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) title for 5 years in a row.

Google Cloud Champion

Google Cloud Champion

Google awarded us the Champion Innovator title recognizing our technical skill and expertise.

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