Knowledge Center

View Documents, Photos, or Videos

With File Station, you can view documents, videos or photos easily.

To switch the way items are displayed:

You can switch between list view and icon view to change the way items are displayed in the main area. Click the List View button at the top-right corner to arrange files into a list or click the Icon View button to display them in accompanying icons and text.

You will see thumbnails of photos in icon view under the following conditions:

  • The photos are located within indexed folders listed under Control Panel > Indexing Service > Media Indexing > Indexed Folder, and you have already installed Photo Station or Media Server on your Synology NAS device.
  • The thumbnail data stored in the EXIF entries created by your digital camera are available.

To view files using Synology Office:

  1. Make sure you have installed Synology Office on your Synology NAS.
  2. In File Station, right-click the file you want to open and choose View > View in Office.
  3. To edit the file in Synology Office, click Import to Office and the file will be opened in Synology Office as a new file.

Importing files saved in File Station to Synology Office allows you to edit the files directly with the built-in features in Synology Office and collaborate with others easily.

Supported formats:

  • Synology Office supports the following formats for import: docx, xlsx, xlsm, xltx, xltm, xls, xlt, ods, ots, csv
  • With Document Viewer* installed, the following file formats can also be imported: doc

Note:

  • After you import a file to Synology Office, modifications made to the file in Synology Office will not be synched backed to the original file in File Station and vice versa.

To view documents in Microsoft Office Online:

Simply right-click the document you want to open and choose View > View in Microsoft Office Online.

By using Microsoft Office Viewer to view Microsoft Office documents hosted on your Synology NAS device, you can access these documents with Microsoft Office features intact in a web browser without the need to have Microsoft Office installed on your computer.

Supported formats:

Microsoft Office Viewer supports the following formats:

  • Word: docx, docm, dotm, dotx
  • Excel: xlsx, xlsb, xls, xlsm
  • PowerPoint: pptx, ppsx, ppt, pps, pptm, potm, ppam, potx, ppsm

Note:

  • To view documents in Microsoft Office Online, make sure you have enabled QuickConnect. If not, please log into DSM as a user belonging to the administrators group and go to Control Panel > QuickConnect.
  • A Word or PowerPoint file must be less than 10 MB; an Excel file must be less than 5 MB.
  • The file name must contain only English letters and numbers.

To view documents in Google docs:

Simply right-click the document you want to open and choose View > View in Google docs.

Supported formats:

Google docs Viewer supports the following formats: doc, docx, ppt, xlsx, pdf, tif

Note:

  • To view documents in Google docs, make sure your Synology NAS device is fully accessible over the Internet. If your Synology NAS is located behind a router, make sure you have specified the port forwarding rule for DSM at Control Panel > External Access > Router Configuration. The default port numbers for DSM are 5000 (HTTP) and 5001 (HTTPS). If you still have trouble viewing documents in Google docs, you might need to specify the router port for DSM at Control Panel > External Access > Advanced.

To preview photos:

  1. Right-click a photo and choose Preview to open the Photo Viewer window.
  2. Hover your mouse over the bottom of Photo Viewer to reveal the thumbnail sliding bar for quick navigation.

Supported formats:

Photo Viewer supports the following formats: jpg, jpeg, jpe, bmp, gif, png, tiff, tif, arw, srf, sr2, dcr, k25, kdc, cr2, crw, nef, mrw, ptx, pef, raf, 3fr, erf, mos, orf, rw2, raw

To play (preview) sound files:

  • To play sound files: Double-click on one or more sound files to open them with Audio Player. Alternatively, you can also play sound files by right-clicking a sound file and choosing Play.*
  • To play sound files by folder: Click a single folder, or press Ctrl (for Windows users)/command (for Mac users) and click on multiple folders. Then right-click the selected folder(s) and choose Play to open them with Audio Player.*

Supported formats:

Audio Player supports the following formats:

  • mp3, m4a, m4b, aac, ogg, wav, flac, ape, aiff, aif, wma

Note:

  • You can play up to 1024 sound files at one time.

To play videos:

  1. Right-click a video and choose Play to open the Video Player window.
  2. The video should start playing right away. If not, please make sure you have installed VLC Player (Windows) on your local computer.

    3. Note:

    • While installing VLC Player, make sure you have ticked Mozilla plugin and ActiveX plugin.
    • VLC is supported by the following browsers:
      Windows: Internet Explorer
    • If VLC is installed on your computer, and you are connecting to DSM with a supported web browser, Video Player supports the following formats: avi, dat, mkv, vob, asf, wmv, mov, qt, divx, flv, swf, rm, rmvb, mpg, mpeg, mpeg1, m1v, mpeg2, m2v, mp2, dvr-ms, m2ts, mts, m2t, ts, tp, trp, mpeg4, m4v, mp4, 3g2, 3gp, 3gp2, webm, mpe, xvid
    • If VLC is not installed on your local computer, Video Player will play videos supported by HTML5. Please refer to here for HTML5 videos supported by different web browsers.
    • If you connect to DSM via the HTTPS protocol, you need to import a trusted certificate (at Control Panel > Security > Certificate) to be able to play videos with File Station.
    • VLC does not support HTTPS streaming.
  3. If you have a subtitle file with the same name and in the same folder as the video, or your video contains embedded subtitles, you should be able to see the subtitle during video playback. If you want to use another subtitle, choose it from the drop-down menu.

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* Unavailable on certain models.