Lightweight Reader for Microsoft Word Documents

Question

I am looking for a document reader that can open Microsoft Word documents for reading. I am using Mac OSX.

Features I want include:

• Loads very quickly. I would prefer it if the program opens almost immediately.
• Small memory footprint. I don't want a program that requires a lot of memory or CPU time. Instead, I'm hoping for an app I can be using while using multiple other resource-intensive apps, like Chrome and an IDE, without affecting my computer's performance.
• Can read .doc and .docx files

Features I don't need:

• I only want to read documents, not edit them.

Features that would be nice:

• Easy to copy text from the document and paste it elsewhere
• Can read other word processors' formats, like Open Office .odt

Answer 1

One possibility would be to use pandoc to convert the word processor format document to one you can open in your browser or IDE - I would suggest html for the former and markdown for the IDE. You could even convert to an e-book format such as epub as there are several lightweight viewers.

The one downside is I don't think it supports the older Microsoft .doc format.

Pandoc is free and cross platform.

Input formats: docbook, docx, epub, haddock, html, json, latex, markdown, markdown_github, markdown_mmd, markdown_phpextra, markdown_strict, mediawiki, native, opml, org, rst, t2t, textile, twiki

Output Formats: asciidoc, beamer, context, docbook, docx, dokuwiki, dzslides, epub, epub3, fb2, haddock, html, html5, icml, json, latex, man, markdown, markdown_github, markdown_mmd, markdown_phpextra, markdown_strict, mediawiki, native, odt, opendocument, opml, org, pdf*, plain, revealjs, rst, rtf, s5, slideous, slidy, texinfo, textile