Open Microsoft Works .wps files that Word refuses
That .wps file was probably written on the family computer — a school report, a résumé, Grandma’s recipes, letters that mattered enough to keep. Microsoft Works came bundled with millions of home PCs through the 1990s and 2000s, and then it simply went away, leaving modern Word to shrug at the files it left behind. This page opens them. Drag a .wps file in and you’ll get an instant preview plus a download as .odt (which opens in current Word, LibreOffice, or Pages) or plain text. The conversion runs entirely on your own computer, inside your browser — nothing is transmitted, stored, or seen by anyone else, and the original file is never touched. A small engine of about 2MB loads on first use; after that, the page works even without an internet connection.
About Microsoft Works (.wps)
Microsoft Works, launched in 1987, was the everything-suite for people who didn’t need — or couldn’t afford — full Office: a word processor, spreadsheet, and database in one inexpensive package. PC makers loved it, and for two decades it came preinstalled on a huge share of home computers: Packard Bells, Gateways, Dells, eMachines. If a family wrote something on their computer in 1996, odds are good it was written in Works. The catch was always the file format. Works saved word-processing documents as .wps, a format its big sibling Word never fully embraced, and when Microsoft wound Works down in 2007 the conversion filters gradually disappeared from Word too — today’s Word simply refuses the files. The documents themselves are fine; only the doors closed. This page reopens them with libwps, a library from the Document Liberation Project — the same team that writes LibreOffice’s import filters — which reads Works word-processing documents from the DOS versions through Works for Windows 2 to 6.
Frequently asked questions
Does my file get uploaded to a server?
No. The conversion happens inside your browser, on your computer, using a compact WebAssembly build of libwps. There is no upload, no cloud processing, and no copy of your document anywhere but where it already lives. After the engine’s first load (about 2MB), the converter even works offline.
How do you know it’s really a Works file? What about Works spreadsheets?
The converter reads the file’s contents rather than trusting the extension, so renamed or mislabeled files are identified correctly. Works spreadsheets and databases are detected too, but conversion currently covers word-processing documents only — spreadsheet and database support isn’t here yet. If you drop one in, the tool will tell you what it found.
What is .odt, and will my formatting survive?
.odt is the OpenDocument text format, and it opens directly in modern Word, LibreOffice (free), and Apple Pages. Fonts, alignment, and layout are preserved wherever they can be recovered from the Works file; where something can’t be reconstructed, you still get the complete text. There’s also a plain-text download and an on-screen preview so you can check the result immediately.
Why won’t modern Word open my .wps file in the first place?
Works and Word were separate products with unrelated file formats, and Word relied on optional converter add-ins to read .wps. Microsoft discontinued Works in 2007 and later removed those converters, partly for security reasons — so current versions of Word don’t just fail to open .wps files, they refuse outright. The format didn’t become unreadable; the software that read it was retired. libwps, used here, is an actively maintained replacement.