Gallery: Open and create portable XPS documents

In order to read documents saved in Microsoft’s XPS format, it’s first necessary to download the relevant viewer program from the Microsoft website. Launch Internet Explorer, type www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/ viewxps.mspx into the Address bar at the top, then press Return. When the website opens, click the link on the left side to download the XPS Viewer.

If Windows displays a security warning, ignore it and click the Run button. At the next dialogue box, click Run again. Depending on how the PC is set up, it may be necessary to download something called the .Net Framework (this is a set of utilities that make it easier for programmers to do their work). If so, read and accept the licence agreement and, when the process has finished, click the Exit button. The XPS Viewer will also download and install itself.

Unlike a typical Windows program, there’s no obvious sign that XPS Viewer is ready for action. That’s because it sits ‘inside’ Internet Explorer, so the best way to get started is to have someone send over an XPS document. In this Workshop, we’re taking a document created in Word 2007 – here we’ve clicked the Office button and chosen Save As, then XPS or PDF. This feature is built into Vista and it’s possible, for example, to create an XPS document from any Office program.

Next, we’ve attached the XPS document to an email and sent it to a PC running XP. Then we’ve extracted it from the mail and dropped it on the Windows Desktop. Right-clicking on the icon opens a pop-up menu – choose Open With, then select XPS Viewer. The document in question opens inside Internet Explorer. The XPS Viewer adds a toolbar along the top and a selection of controls along the bottom that we’ll look at in the next step.

Try clicking the icons at the bottom right of the main window to view the XPS document at 100 per cent, expanded to the page width, so it shows the entire page, displayed as two pages side by side or as a series of thumbnails. Alternatively, define the exact size of the page display by typing a percentage into the Zoom box at the bottom. It’s also possible to search for text by typing it into the little box at the top right, then using the arrows to move from each occurrence to the next.

As well as being able to open documents saved in the XPS format, installing the XPS Viewer adds an extra option to the Windows print dialogue box. In the example shown here, we’ve highlighted all the text in the XPS Viewer, then copied it into an empty Word document. Then, by choosing File and Print, and opening the printer dropdown list in the dialogue box, it’s possible to select Microsoft XPS Document Writer. This will ‘print’ the contents to a new XPS document that can be opened in Internet Explorer as explained earlier.

As well as being able to open documents saved in the XPS format, installing the XPS Viewer adds an extra option to the Windows print dialogue box. In the example shown here, we’ve highlighted all the text in the XPS Viewer, then copied it into an empty Word document. Then, by choosing File and Print, and opening the printer dropdown list in the dialogue box, it’s possible to select Microsoft XPS Document Writer. This will ‘print’ the contents to a new XPS document that can be opened in Internet Explorer as explained earlier.