Doconut is a complete document viewing solution for the .NET ecosystem.
It enables ASP.NET MVC, .NET Core, Blazor, and WebForms developers to embed a fast, pixel-precise document viewer supporting:
- Word (DOC/DOCX)
- Excel (XLS/XLSX)
- PowerPoint (PPT/PPTX)
- CAD (DWG/DXF)
- PSD, TIFF, and images
- Email formats (EML, MSG)
- E-books and text-based formats
Doconut renders all documents server-side, giving consistent output across browsers and devices without plugins or external viewers.
Four plugins extend it, licensed separately from the viewer:
- Annotation Plugin - highlights, notes, shapes, stamps and markup
- Converter Plugin - conversion between PDF, Office, image, CAD and email formats
- DICOM Plugin - medical imaging,
.dcmand.ima - Search Plugin - search inside PDFs, Word, Excel and other formats that carry a text layer
Controlled printing is not among them: it is part of the viewer itself, configured rather than licensed.
Core Features
| Feature | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Multi-Format Viewing | View PDFs, Office files, CAD drawings, images, and email formats directly in the browser. |
| Server-Side Rendering | Ensures stable, plugin-free viewing in any modern browser. |
| Annotations Plugin | Add highlights, shapes, notes, callouts, and markups. |
| Search Plugin | Search the text layer a document already carries. There is no OCR, so a page held only as a scanned image has nothing to find. |
| Converter Plugin | Convert PDF ↔ Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Images, and more. |
| Caching | Cache generated pages to reduce processing time on subsequent loads. |
| Integration Across .NET | Works with MVC, .NET Framework, .NET Core, and Blazor. |
Real-World Usage Examples
Doconut is commonly used in:
- Enterprise portals that need internal document previewing
- Engineering dashboards for DWG/DXF and technical drawings
- Financial and insurance workflows handling reports and statements
- Web apps needing PDF/Office conversions via the Converter Plugin
Common Questions
Q: Does Doconut require browser plugins?
No. Doconut renders everything server-side and works in any modern browser.
Q: Can Doconut convert documents?
Yes. With the Converter Plugin, developers can convert PDF, Office, CAD, and image formats.
Q: Does it support annotations and markup?
Yes. The Annotation Plugin allows highlights, shapes, sticky notes, and text comments.
Key Takeaways
- Doconut provides a .NET viewer covering 75 file extensions across 18 families — PDF, Office, CAD, Visio, Project, email, eBook and images.
- Rendering is server-side, which is what keeps it plugin-free in the browser and what puts the processing cost on your servers.
- Four plugins extend it: Annotation, Converter, DICOM and Search. Controlled printing is part of the viewer, not a plugin.
- The free viewers on Doconut.app accept 73 of the 75 — everything but DICOM.