Social Media Man

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve encountered a strange .wps document. Perhaps it was an archived tax report stored on a dusty computer locked inside some old cabinet, or maybe the file is an endearing novella written in your not-so-distant youth. Either way, what matters is that you’ve got this strange file and you need a program to open it.

At first it might appear like you’re out of luck – the .WPS file extension has now become obsolete and no modern office software uses it anymore. The original application that stored documents in this format – Microsoft Works – has also fallen in disfavor with most users. It’s all MS Office and OpenOffice for the Windows-running office-dwellers now. Sure, if the file is important enough you could go and spend almost forty dollars on the MS Works package, but surely there is a better and cheaper way?

There is indeed. In their surprising megacorporative benevolence, MS has created a “Microsoft Works File Converter” that will enable you to open and view WPS files in MS Word (yep, you’ll need a recent version of Word to make the converter work).

If, for some inexplicable reason, you can’t use Word on your computer, there are alternative WPS programs available on the Web. For example, “Word Viewer” is another MS-created free application that can open the abovementioned file format. It’s also stand-alone, so you can install it even if you haven’t purchased Microsoft Word. The downside is that the Word Viewer opens files only in read-only mode – you would be able to view your .wps files with it, but not convert or edit them.

In conclusion, while the .wps file extension is rarely used now, you can still open these files with the right software.