When it comes to viewing or editing office documents, there is nothing better than Microsoft Office suite. But if you do not want to shell out hundreds of dollars for your menial office document editing needs, then you can use their Office Online extension for the Chrome browser. Using this extension in the Chrome browser, you will be able to create new documents, view existing documents and edit them if needed. It supports Word documents, Excel spread-sheets, PowerPoint presentations, OneNote notes or the Sway stories.
If you want to be able to view or edit the locally stored Office documents (files on your hard disk), then you immediately after installing the Office Online extension for the Chrome browser, you have to open the Chrome extension settings (chrome://extensions), scroll down and locate the Office Online extension and then check the option labeled Allow access to file URLs. After this you would be able to drag and drop any Office document file on the Chrome browser window and it shall be opened by the Office Online (first it will be uploaded to your OneDrive account).
You can create new documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Sway) or open existing documents by clicking on the Office icon in the Chrome toolbar. If you choose a document from the local disk, it will be first uploaded to your Microsoft OneDrive account and only then you will be able to edit or view it.
The Office Online extension is feature rich and provides almost the same interface and same set of features as the full Office Suite. After editing the document, you can choose to print it, save it on the cloud (OneDrive) or save a copy to the local disk.
Conclusion: Office Online extension for Chrome brings the comfort and ease of viewing or editing the Office documents from within the Chrome browser. All you have to do is login using your Microsoft account and you get instant access to the Office Online.
You can get Office Online for Chrome from https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/office-online/ndjpnladcallmjemlbaebfadecfhkepb?hl=en.