Word / Office documents viewer control in PowerApps

[Rfla]

Similar as this: https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/tutorials/control-pdf-viewer/

but for Word and other Office document, and with support for files stored in SharePoint and OneDrive.

[JC75NATS]

Yes when we going to have a viewer tool that can simply link to a Sharepoint document library and open on a iPad/iPhone the document in the Powerapp as a viewer? Rather than needing to use complicated resource Hungry flows.

It be great that also if Powerapps could connect to on device storage also - which would mean a user could pre load PDFs etc to the device and then use a well designed powerapp gallery menu would connect to the on device storage  so users could browse/search for documents and view them in the Powerapp, while being offline. We have a zillion uses for this in our company where for regulatory reasons we have to have a physical copy on a device and not need to have an  internet/cloud connection. At present we resort to using PDF Viewer apps locked down on iPads which is such a waste.

[Office365Master]

Wouldn't it be cool if you could view Word, PowerPoint & HTML files stored in SharePoint in your Power Apps in the PDF Viewer control with nothing more than a single expression / formula on the Document property of the control. One line of code, no Power Automate flow 😊. That's it.

Short and sweet demo on YouTube with a blog to follow in the next few days inclusive of the demo Power App showcased in the video... 

https://youtu.be/6FVbE4zM0Zk

Excited yet?

This solution will not enable offline viewing of documents nor viewing files on the local storage of the device where the app is running. The probability of that functionality being implemented natively within Power Apps in the foreseeable future would be highly unlikely. Just saying.

@JC75  - As simple as it gets!

[Office365Master]

Blog:

Viewing Word, PowerPoint & HTML files stored in SharePoint in Power Apps

[TomMDL]

For a native Office files viewer, it'd be very interesting to be able to interact with the document loaded in that viewer. To only e.g. have edit functionalities for a Word file like they already exist in Word Online, but also be able 

• insert text with mark-up (at selection, at bookmark, etc.)
• extract / read document properties or other metadata (e.g. internal id of a paragraph)
• basic / advance functions for handling variables in a Word document (as is already possible through Power Automate)
• read selection (text + properties such as page)
• (probably a more personal one, but towards document review  this would be awesome) function to insert comments (as in Review > Comments, but then automated) with dynamically generated text in PA

If you think about it: having the Office VBA Object model accessible in PA would be quite a deal... 😉 

(yes, of course, security issues will most probably prevent that, but still some basis similar functions would be great)

This would allow for some pretty advance document assembly functionality as invoice generation, contract drafting & reviewing, quotation & proposal creation, etc.