What is the status of view.officeapps.live.com?

Question

Greetings!

We need to show .doc and .docx documents to our users in browser without requiring them to download the files. Embedding view.officeapps.live.com looks like a great solution. However, I am not sure about the status of this service. From other questions here I can see that https://products.office.com/en-AU/office-online/view-office-documents-online should contain information about the service, but it redirects to the Microsoft 365 page. Is view.officeapps.live.com still supported, or was it discontinued?

Other question I have is about limitations of the service. Is there some limit to number of displayed documents, or their size? Are documents stored on Microsoft servers? If so, for how long, and who has access to them?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Hi George,

Thank you for your answers. I did a little testing of the service on my own and here are my findings.

I have exposed a Word document to the internet so it can be downloaded using a public URL and rendered it in the browser using view.officeapps.live.com. Then I have removed the document, so it is no longer accessible through the original URL. However, it was still accessible through the view.officeapps.live.com service. It has disappeared only on the following day.

From this I can conclude that my files are definitely cached somewhere on Microsoft servers. Is there any official documentation about the view.officeapps.live.com? It would be great to know how long my documents are stored by Microsoft in this way and how else they can be used. Additionally, I need to know if the service will be supported long-term, or if it can be discontinued at any moment

Thank you,

Nazar Matsura

Answer 2

Hi Nazar,

Thanks for posting in the community. We are happy to help you.

According to your description, I did a search and test. Here are my test results.

1. The service "view.officeapps.live.com" still works.
2. According to this thread, the file size limit should be 10 MB (Rebecca-H's reply). Based on my test, one URL for one file.

For example:

https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=xxx.docx

https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/embed.aspx?src=xxx.docx

Here is a link created by others. You can click it to view the document. https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=newteach.pbworks.com%2Ff%2Fele%2Bnewsletter.docx

3. No, they shouldn't be stored on the Microsoft server when you use the service. To my knowledge, this service is used to view Office files stored on the public internet (publicly accessible), and these files are already stored online.
4. As long as the file is stored on the public internet and its URL is valid (the path hasn't been changed), the URL "https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=xxx.docx" will be available forever.
5. Since the file is publicly accessible, anyone can access this link to view it.

Also, we welcome community members to share ideas about the situation.

Sincerely,

George | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 3

Yes, It is possible if it is publicly accessible.

Answer 4

Would it be possible to pass public open api as src instead of static office files?

Example: https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://somedomain.com/api/v1/excel?token=abcde

Answer 5

Hi Nazar,

I'm writing this reply to follow up on this thread, may I know if you have checked my last replies? If you have any updates, please feel free and come back to share them with us.

Sincerely,

George | Microsoft Community Moderator