Local Office Preview

Local Office Preview is a desktop-only, read-only Obsidian plugin for previewing PPT/PPTX, XLS/XLSX, DOC/DOCX, TXT, and LOG files without creating duplicate preview files in your vault.

Supported files:

• PowerPoint: .ppt, .pptx, .pps, .ppsx
• Excel: .xls, .xlsx
• Word: .doc, .docx
• Text: .txt, .log

Preview strategy

• Excel .xlsx opens in fast table preview by default.
• Legacy Excel .xls uses PDF preview.
• PowerPoint opens as a local temporary PDF preview by default.
• Word .docx opens in fast text preview by default.
• Legacy Word .doc uses PDF preview.
• TXT and LOG files open directly as text.
• Excel also has a PDF preview button for complex workbooks where layout matters.
• Copy Text copies extractable text from TXT/LOG, XLSX, DOCX, PPTX, and PPSX without editing the original file.

Generated PDFs are cached in the operating system temp directory, not in the Obsidian vault. Your GitHub repository can keep only the original Office and text files.

Privacy and safety

• No network requests.
• No upload to third-party services.
• No edits are written back to Office files.
• Temporary PDF previews are stored under the system temp directory.
• Office-to-PDF conversion tries your local LibreOffice installation first. On Windows, it falls back to WPS Office or Microsoft Office COM export.

See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for dependency license notes.

Requirement for PPT, legacy Word, and legacy Excel preview

Install LibreOffice:

https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download-libreoffice/

On Windows, the plugin tries these paths automatically:

C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program\soffice.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\LibreOffice\program\soffice.exe

If LibreOffice is installed somewhere else, set the full soffice.exe path in the plugin settings.

On Windows, WPS Office or Microsoft Office can also be used. No LibreOffice path is required when WPS/Office COM export works.

Excel .xlsx fast preview and Word .docx text preview do not require LibreOffice or WPS. PowerPoint, legacy .xls, legacy .doc, and Excel PDF preview require LibreOffice, WPS Office, or Microsoft Office.

Development

Install dependencies:

npm install

Build:

npm run build

Development watch:

npm run dev

Local installation

After building, copy these files into your vault:

<your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/local-office-preview/
  main.js
  manifest.json
  styles.css

Then restart Obsidian or reload community plugins, and enable Local Office Preview.

Marketplace preparation

Before submitting to the Obsidian community plugin market:

1. Publish this repository publicly on GitHub.
2. Make sure the release contains main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css.
3. Tag the release with the same version as manifest.json, for example 0.2.3.
4. Submit the plugin through the Obsidian Community directory at https://community.obsidian.md/plugins.

Obsidian uses the repository manifest.json and README.md for plugin details, but downloads installable files from GitHub releases. The GitHub release tag must match the version in manifest.json.