Problem: You have a bunch of Adobe PDF documents on the computer (or on a website) but there’s no Acrobat Reader to view those files. Is it possible to quickly view PDF files without downloading Adobe Reader or other desktop software:

Here are a bunch of non-Adobe options for reading PDFs:

1. Use Gmail - Send the PDF file(s) as an email attachment to your own Gmail account. Then open the email and click the ”View as HTML” link next to those PDF attachments.

2. PDF Escape - Think of PDF Escape as a web version of Adobe or FoxIt PDF reader. Not only can you upload and view your PDFs online, it also lets you fill PDF forms.

3. SlideShare - Send the PDF files as an email attachment to upload@upload.slideshare.net or upload them via web browser and view your PDF as image slides inside the SlideShare player. The PDF conversion engine of SlideShare is impressive.

4. Zoho Viewer - Like SlideShare, you can either upload PDF files from the computer to Zoho Viewer or ask that service to fetch the PDF from another website.

5. Samurajdata - A quick and efficient online viewer for PDF, PostScript and Word files. You can either upload files from the computer or if the files are on some website, just give the URL and this service will automatically fetch that PDF and render it in your web browser.

Which online PDF viewer is perfect for you ?

If your PDF has images in addition to text, go with PDF Escape or SlideShare. If you want tto convert PDF to image files, Samurajdata is the perfect service. If you want to make text selection in PDFs, Gmail or SlideShare is nice (the PDF text is available in the transcript section).

Other players: Adobe Access and Scribd also offer PDF to HTML / Text conversion services but for some reason, both of them are not working anymore.

Related: Convert PDF To Word Docs Online