# Overview of the Viewing API

The Viewing API (VAPI) enables you to build a Windows program that uses Viewing components to manage many types of document, including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and graphics. See Document Readers for more information on supported formats.

You can use the Viewing API to create an application to:

- Open and view a document.

- Draw a page of a word processing document, spreadsheet, or a picture into a supplied Device Context (HDC). This is useful for generating thumbnail views of documents.

- Print a document (including the ability to print a document without viewing it) to a specified printer or to the default printer.

- Allow viewed word processing and spreadsheet documents to be saved as RTF, HTML, or text. Also, you can save image formats to other supported image formats.

- Convert word processing and spreadsheet documents to text, RTF, or HTML without viewing them.

- View or extract subfiles from a container file, such as ZIP, TAR, or PST.

- View and manipulate a graphic (including rotate and magnify).

- Annotate documents with a bitmap or selected text. The Viewing API includes annotation event notification for actions such as clicking and double-clicking, allowing for implementation of hyperlink and pop-up text.

- Highlight all occurrences of a word in a document.

- Filter spreadsheets, presentation graphics, and documents to text. A cross-platform C API that provides text filtering is also available. Contact Micro Focus for information on KeyView Filter SDK.

- Determine a document's format based on its contents, not its file extension.

- Obtain document metadata, such as a document's author or title.

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