Please note that many articles provided to me for publishing on this web site are created using Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel. I do not convert them. If your computer does not have these products installed you may not be able to view these articles. Microsoft has provided free viewers which will automatically configure themselves as Helper Applications for Internet Explorer or Netscape. These viewers allow automatic viewing of these articles. You can download and install these viewers from these links:

Word Viewer (24.5MB) Installation document and download link from Microsoft Download Center.

Excel Viewer (74.1MB) Installation document and download link from Microsoft Download Center.

PowerPoint Viewer (60.3MB) Installation document and download link from Microsoft Download Center.

Visio Viewer (16.7MB) - Installation document and download link from Microsoft Download Center. 

With the above viewers (or if you have Microsoft Office 2003 installed) you will not be able to read documents created with Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010. You can fix the problem by downloading and installing the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack (37.0MB) - Installation document and download link from Microsoft Download Center.
NB After installing the Compatibility Pack you should run Microsoft Update multiple times to bring the Office products up to date.

If you prefer to use a completely free 'equivalent' to Microsoft Office you can download and install OpenOffice.org (137MB).
This suite of products can open files created with Microsoft Office products. 

If you wish to view Adobe Portable Document Format (.pdf) files and you do not already have a viewer you can download and install the latest version of Adobe Reader (82.4MB)
A smaller alternative free viewer is Foxit (31.8MB)