Office 365 – SharePoint Online – Accessibility mode or PDF converter?

Today I tried to create a new document in Office 365’s SharePoint Online. Nothing new I hear you say, you can do that on the back of a surf board, while on holiday. So I thought I ‘ll give that a go:

As I got wet feet I thought better try it just at my desk.

So I created a new document:

Then I chose to open the document in Preview:

Then within the Preview screen there is the option Accessibility mode

Interesting!

So what does this do. As always there is only one way to find out, click on the option:

First thing I noticed is that Document.pdf at the left hand top of my browser window.

Has my word document been converted to pdf?

Well there is a download button at the right hand side? So again I click the button and yes, I’m getting the pdf save button. Directly from SharePoint I can now create a pdf.

Unfortunately the above dialog doesn’t default to the original location of the word document that I’m previewing. But this is a nice hidden feature that will work quite nicely.

Then I’ll complete this post with a small bonus. Did you notice the Previous/Next control? This lets you move through all the documents in the library without leaving the previewer. This is also available in the View mode (this is the name for the not accessible version of the viewer)

Pieter Veenstra

Is your business still running on paper trails, sprawling Excel files, or ageing Access databases? There's a better way — and I can show you exactly what it looks like. I'm the Technical Director of Vantage 365, a Microsoft solutions consultancy working with clients across the UK, the Netherlands, and worldwide. For over 30 years I've been turning messy, manual business processes into clean, automated systems that save time, reduce errors, and give teams the visibility they need to make better decisions. SharePains is not just any blog run by a Microsoft MVP. Have you ever used Try-Catch in Power Automate? The original post about Try-Catch in Power Automate can still be found on this site, https://sharepains.com/2018/02/07/try-catch-finally-in-power-automate-flow/ Or have you ever used the Pieter’s method to avoid variables and speed up your flows? https://sharepains.com/2020/03/11/pieters-method-for-advanced-in-flows/ You can contact me using contact@sharepains.com