Chanpory Rith
Dec 15, 2006
Just by accident, I discovered TextEdit’s forgotten superpower to open and edit Word docs. Just drag any Word document onto TextEdit, and it opens instantly. Barely a wait. Not even a splash screen.
If you’re sick of waiting for Word’s one-billion toolbars and useless features to load, this is a step closer to escaping the clenches of Bill Gates.
Best of all, TextEdit is free and comes with every Mac. If you have a PC, the closest free app like this is Jarte. It ain’t pretty, but it’ll open and save Word docs (Word 95 format only).
9 Comments
Derek Punsalan
12:07 pm
I was just recently reminded of this little bit of info as well. Definitely check out NeoOffice for a nearly full featured alternative to Office. The new TextEdit which will ship with Leopard supposedly supports the newer Office ‘07 document file format as well.
Randy Carlton
2:10 pm
…or you could just install Google Toolbar 3 Beta for Firefox and you never have to leave Firefox again :^)
Christy
2:21 pm
I’ve always done this since most of the time I am just copying and pasting the text into another program like InDesign or Dreamweaver anyhow. Also, don’t forget how easy it is to make a .pdf of anything you open in text edit, by going to Print > PDF > Save as PDF.
Andrew White
6:48 pm
Actually, AbiWord is pretty close. Its lightweight, but includes a lot more features than Text Edit. Runs on Linux, Windows and Mac.
Ken
6:57 am
I took a glimpse of Jarte and I was amazed… You already warned us (“…It ain’t pretty…”), but I could never imagine how far you can go on UI un-prettiness.
If you need something fast in Windows, Wordpad is good enough.
Chanpory
7:51 am
Thanks for all the extra tips and Windows suggestions. NeoOffice and AbiWord look quite promising. Is it true that WordPad can’t open Word docs?
Andrew White
1:10 pm
It is true that Word Pad cannot open DOC files from the newest version of Office, and that the version of Word Pad in Vista will no longer open DOCs.
Ero
7:14 am
OpenOffice does Word files quite nicely, and is free and cross-platform. No reason not to replace the whole office suite: it’s an easy install, and the tools are all in mostly the same place. Also includes good analogs for Powerpoint and Excel!
tflora
11:58 am
One word (no pun intended)…..Zoho