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 open them. In this article I’ll discuss a bunch of ways to open a .wps file in OO.

Some custom OpenOffice distributions include the libwps library that lets you open WPS files. In particular, the Ubuntu version and NeoOffice can do it. With libwps the task is completely seemless, as you can open the MS Works file like any other file.

Another possibility is to use the command-line converter wps2odt. You can find this converter on SourceForge. Note that this software is only available as source, so you’ll probably need to install CygWin if you want to compile and use it on Windows. Alternatively, 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 several WPS to DOC converters available, including the free online converter Zamzar.com. OpenOffice can open .doc files easily, and you can re-save them in the native OO format 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.

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