How to view Word DOC using Word Viewer

Question

I am a new administrator for a SharePoint 2010 farm with 10s of GB of Microsoft Word documents, most of which are in Word 97-2003 DOC format.  I have recently configured the Word Viewing service and can of course view Word 2010 documents saved
to the farm, but how to get the legacy archive of DOCs viewable using Word Viewing as well?
From all that I have read, OWA only works for Office 2010 documents.  Is there any tweak available to get it to be able to view older formatted Word documents also in the browser?
Baring this, are there batch conversion utilities available?  I have searched and found some
here and here, but am seeking more robust solutions.
I would be interested in learning about what other administrators have done to resolve similar problems.
Sincerely,
Steve

Answer 1

Hi Steve,
I understand that the error occurred when you open the word files.
I recommend to delete the cache files for the corresponding web aaplication using PowerShell.
Go to Central Administration > Application Management > View all site collections > select the web application and then check for site collection with URL /sites/Office_Viewing_Service_Cache and make sure it is there. Then open http://{webapp url}/sites/Office_Viewing_Service_Cache
and you will see the cached
files of this web application.
You can also add the entry below in web.config to see if the issue still occurs:
<compilation optimizeCompilations="true">
More information:
http://kancharla-sharepoint.blogspot.in/2013/08/sharepoint-word-web-app-cannot-open.html
I also recommend to check the event log and ULS log to see if anything unexpected occurred.
To check event log, click the Start button and type “Event Viewer” in the Search box.
For SharePoint 2010, by default, ULS log is at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS.
Best regards.
Thanks
Victoria Xia
TechNet Community Support