Word documents, OpenOffice.org spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations: they arrive in emails from here and there, and we used to have viewers for all of them, too.

Now the viewers lie mostly dormant, and excursions with wireless access to our Gmailturns these attachments into web pages that can be viewed accounts using devices that know neither PowerPoint nor PDF cannot scare us. Gmail comfortably and fast from anywhere with just a browser.

Lacking any of these Office programs, you can even forward mail to Gmail to take a glimpse at documents you could not otherwise open. But what are the file types supported by Gmail's instant View as HTML attachment viewer?

Attachment Types Supported for Viewing as HTML in Gmail

• .doc - Microsoft Word documents
• .xls - Microsoft Excel spread sheets
• .ppt - Microsoft PowerPoint presentations
• .sxw - OpenOffice 1 / StarOffice 6/7 documents
• .sxc - OpenOffice 1 / StarOffice 6/7 spread sheets
• .sxi - OpenOffice 1 / StarOffice 6/7 presentations
• .sdw - StarWriter documents
• .sdc - StarCalc spread sheets
• .sdd - StarImpress presentation
• .pdf - Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) documents

You can send attachments of these types to Gmail users without having to worry about them not being able to open your files.