An XPS viewer for files Windows stopped opening
Windows used to ship an XPS viewer as standard. Since 2018 it has been an optional feature that most new PCs never get, so an .xps receipt or an .oxps printout often arrives with no program to show it. The usual fix involves digging through Optional features, or uploading the file to a converter site.
XPS Viewer is a regular app you install once. After that a double-click in File Explorer opens either format, and you can also drag a file onto the window or use Open an XPS document. Pages appear with thumbnails down the side, Fit page to see each page whole, and zoom with Ctrl+plus and Ctrl+minus.
If the file only needs reading, that is the whole job. If it needs sending on, the next two sections cover a PDF for people and a Word file or spreadsheet for editing.
What is an XPS file, and where do they come from?
XPS is a fixed-layout document format, comparable to PDF, that Windows introduced alongside Vista. OXPS, or OpenXPS, is its standardized successor, and Windows 8 and later produce it by default. Most of these files are created by the Microsoft XPS Document Writer, a virtual printer that saves whatever you print to disk instead of paper.
That is why they turn up as bank statements, order confirmations and archived reports: someone pressed Print, picked the wrong printer, and saved a file nobody else can open. Once the file is open, Printed from in the Unprint panel names the program that produced it and the month it was made.
Convert XPS to PDF or to an editable Word document
For most people a PDF is the answer, because every phone, browser and upload form accepts one. Save as PDF turns the whole XPS document into a single PDF in one step.
When the text has to change, a PDF does not help, and copying out of a printout gives you a line break at the end of every printed line. Unprint rebuilds the document instead of copying it. Its panel reports what it found before you commit: how many Paragraphs and Tables, and Fonts matched as a count such as 4 of 5. Hover that count to see which typeface is missing from your PC, so you know in advance where the Word file will substitute a similar one.
Save as Word document writes a .docx. Rich Text is offered for older editors, and Open in Write Pad hands the result straight to that editor when it is installed.
Copy tables from XPS into a spreadsheet
Statements and price lists are mostly tables, and tables are what suffer worst when copied out of a printout: the columns collapse into one long run of text. Table to spreadsheet skips that step and writes every table in the document into one .xlsx workbook, with figures you can total and sort straight away.
Check the Tables count in the Unprint panel first. If it reads zero, Unprint found no tables, often because the pages were printed as pictures.
