Open old WordPerfect files (.wpd) right in your browser
If you’re staring at a folder of .wpd files — a retiring partner’s archive, a court record request, a parent’s estate papers — you don’t need to hunt down a 1994 install disc. Drop a file on this page and it opens right here, converted to a modern .odt you can read in Word, LibreOffice, or Pages, or to plain text if that’s all you need. Everything happens inside your browser: a small conversion engine (about 2MB) loads on first use, and after that it even works offline. Your documents are never uploaded to any server, which matters when the files in question are wills, contracts, pleadings, or anything else covered by privilege — legal documents deserve the no-upload treatment, and that is the whole design here. The converter reads WordPerfect files from version 1 through the 6+ era, whether they came from DOS, Windows, or a classic Mac.
About WordPerfect
For most of the 1980s, WordPerfect simply was word processing. WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, released in 1989, was among the most dominant applications of its era — the blue screen, the function-key template draped over the keyboard, and above all Reveal Codes, the split view that exposed every formatting code in the document and let you fix anything with surgical precision. That precision is exactly why the legal profession fell for it and stayed loyal long after the rest of the world drifted to Microsoft Word in the 1990s. Law firms, courts, and government offices kept drafting in WordPerfect for decades, and plenty of court archives and firm file rooms are still full of .wpd files today. The company stumbled through the Windows transition, sold to Novell in 1994, then to Corel in 1996, which publishes WordPerfect Office to this day. But the files that need rescuing are the old ones, and this page reads them with libwpd, the Document Liberation Project library that gives LibreOffice its WordPerfect filter — verified here against real WP1, WP3, WP4, WP5, and WP6 documents.
Frequently asked questions
Is it safe to convert confidential legal documents here?
Yes — because they never leave your machine. The converter is a piece of software (a WebAssembly build of libwpd) that your browser downloads once and runs locally, the same way it runs any web page. There is no upload step, no server-side processing, and no account. Once the engine has loaded, the page works with your network disconnected, which you’re welcome to verify. Your original file is read, never modified.
My files have odd extensions like .wp5, or none at all. Will they open?
Extensions don’t matter here. The converter identifies formats by reading the file’s actual contents, so a WordPerfect document named letter.wp5, letter.old, or just LETTER will be recognized the same way. If a file was renamed somewhere along the line — common after decades of copying between systems — detection sorts it out.
What do I get out, and how faithful is it?
You get an on-screen preview plus a download as .odt, which opens in modern Word, LibreOffice, and Pages, or as plain text. Formatting — fonts, margins, alignment, tables — is preserved wherever it can be recovered from the original file. For most WordPerfect documents the result is very close to what you’d have seen on screen in 1992; when something can’t be recovered, you still get all the text.
Which WordPerfect versions work? What about password-protected files?
Files from WordPerfect 1 through the 6+ era are supported, across DOS, Windows, and Mac — the converter has been verified against real WP1, WP3, WP4, WP5, and WP6 documents. The one hard limitation: password-protected WordPerfect files are not supported. Their contents are scrambled by the password, and this tool cannot unlock them.