Preview Docx, Doc, xls etc in Browser

Question

Hi, we are currently having Appian developed by a third party, and have come across an issue where we cannot preview any office docs in the browser (Edge/Chrome). We can preview .pdf's. 
 Our developer is saying we needs to install some plugins for this functionality to work. Can anyone share their experience of this and offer any recommendations? 
 We are using 19.2 
 Thanks

Mike Schmitt · Answer

I'm not sure the reasoning behind the current restrictions (i seem to remember hearing some mention about security, and i also suspect there's some licensing consideration for the proprietary file types). 
 Anyway, one way I've seen to resolve this for at least some cases, is to use the various PDF conversion utilities available to create temporary PDF-converted copies of whatever file you want to preview on-form, and then display that. I've successfully used this technique to display HTML files previews on a form, at least.

Mike Schmitt · Answer

Check into the Dynamic Document Generator plug-in.

Dave Lewis · Answer

Assuming that you're trying to use the Document Viewer Component released in 18.3, it looks like it has to do entirely with your browser configurations. There's nothing in the Appian product that can change what Chrome does by default, you need other software built to change what Chrome does by default. 
 Ultimately, Appian serves content to your browser or mobile device, and that code then decides what to do with the content Appian provides before displaying it to you. 
 Docs Online Viewer comes as the best rated Chrome extension, though depending on your use case you may want to further vet out the security of that extension. Lots of 5 star reviews. 
 I personally don't ever use Edge for anything, so I can't make any recommendations there.