Open MS Works Documents in OpenOffice
OpenOffice is normally quite versatile with the file types it supports – many old or proprietary formats can be opened and edited just fine. However, .wps files are an exception – even though the support for this format has been promised long ago (in 2005), the current distribution of OO still can’t recognize them. In this post I’ll discuss a bunch of ways to open MS Works files in OO.
Some modified OpenOffice variants include the libwps library that lets you open WPS files. For example, the Ubuntu OO and NeoOffice include this library. With libwps the process is straightforward, as you can open the .wps file as any other document.
Another possibility is to use the command-line converter wps2odt. You can find this converter on SourceForge. Note that the program is distributed in the source code form, so you’ll need to install CygWin if you intend to run it on Windows. On a related note, there’s also the wps2html converter (also command-line) that can convert the WPS document to a HTML file. However, keep in mind that the HTML version may not preserve the original layout.
As far as converters go, there are also some free .wps to .doc you can download, including the free online converter Zamzar.com. OpenOffice can open .doc files easily, and you can save them as .odt later if you want. The best part about the converter(s) mentioned in the linked article is that they were created by Microsoft. While that might not sound like a good thing to an OpenOffice fan, do keep in mind that MS is the progenitor of the WPS format, so their converter is probably/hopefully the best available.
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 29th, 2009 at 11:02 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.