Rob Cottingham

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23 Aug 2005

How to open a WordPerfect file in OS X

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Category: How to...; Technology

A client just sent me a batch of files as background information. And my heart sank as I saw that procession of “.wpd” file extensions. Ugh: WordPerfect files.

There was a time when WordPerfect was the champion of the word processing world. That time was well over a decade ago, though, and Microsoft Word is now the undisputed leader while WordPerfect languishes in relative obscurity.

But every once in a while a WordPerfect file rears its head again. And when you try to open it in OS X, you run into trouble. Microsoft Word can’t understand it. Textedit can’t grok it. Pages wants nothing to do it it.

There’s always the venerable utility MacLinkPlus Deluxe… but I don’t own a copy, and I’m reluctant to shell out something like $100 for a program I very rarely need. Especially if I can solve this problem for free.

So I surfed to VersionTracker. A search on “wordperfect” in the OS X area turned up only two options. One utility, WPConvert, works only on older versions of the WordPerfect format. That’s a pity, because it’s tiny and simple – two things I like in a conversion utility.

The winner is AbiWord, a full-function word processor. (Here’s the official web site.) (Updated: The domain name has changed; I’ve updated the link.) The download is just under 8 MB: hefty, but not onerous on a fast connection. It happily opened every one of those WordPerfect files, and supports a slew of other formats (including Palm database files, of all things).

This is your textbook sledgehammer-to-kill-a-flea solution, but it worked flawlessly.

Here’s another option: join the Yahoo! WordPerfect Mac group, and use their “Links” area to download a free copy of WordPerfect. Be warned: it’s old enough that it runs only in Classic mode (or under OS 8 or 9), and weighs in at 25 MB.

For more Apple goodness, check out Rob’s Noise to Signal cartoons about life as a Mac user!

(two people looking at an iPad) It's the perfect device for watching Apple product announcements!(Steve Jobs onstage, introducing an amazing device and admitting he can't remember what it does)(man with fishhook in nose) Yes, it's a fishhook lodged in my nose. But it's an Apple fishhook, so the user experience is surprisingly pleasant.

  • http://islandofdoubt.net James Hrynyshyn

    Opening WP docs can also prove challenging for the other 90+% of the world that doesn’t use Macs. I recently switched to OpenOffice, the open-source alternative to MS Office. There are patches available for OO that allow opening of WP. I highly recommend OO. It free and very close to MSO in features. No Wintel user should be without it.

  • http://www.adultaddstrengths.com Pete Quily

    Another thing that might work is the text editior bbedit or bbedit light. I find it’s great for converting a wide range of file formats, though sometimes you lose the formatting.

    Pete

  • http://www.robcottingham.ca/roblog Rob

    I’m a BBEdit fan too, Pete. (Mac-only, but there are buckets of free and cheap text editors out there for Windows and Linux.)

    It’s kind of a last resort for me, though. Not only do you lose the formatting, but you often have a lot of junk characters cluttering up the resulting text. (That’s mainly because you’re converting from a binary format, and bringing in a lot of extraneous information along with the text.)

    Still, if all else fails, crack out the text editor.

  • dimpared

    Thanks Rob, this helped me out in a jam. I didn’t know people still used wordperfect! Apparently my client does! I’ve used Abiword before and liked it, it just never occured to me that it might open up a wordperfect file.

  • Kevin Murphy

    Many thanks – from problem to solution in minutes flat. Abiworld opened the WP document without a hitch and with all the formatting. In this instance the file was one of my own, from an unhappy period when I was obliged to use WP on the PC.

  • Stephen Russell

    I did a quick Google search: open wpd mac os x.
    I got Rob Cottingham was the 3rd listing.
    I downloaded it and open the wpd file in a couple
    of seconds.
    Thank you very much.
    Dual G5 Mac OS X 10.3.9

  • Stephen Russell

    correction:
    I downloaded AbiWord.

  • Scott

    Great! Thank You for the tip….My @#$% .WPD files are now worth something agian.

  • Giancarlo

    I googled “open .wpd on mac” and this was the first match. Thanks for leading me to AbiWord.

  • http://www.homebythesea.com Alan Mitchell

    Rob … Thanks so much for sharing your AbiWord experiences. I had suddenly run into some legal documents that I needed to deal with quickly … and between Google & You & AbiWord … well … you saved my day !

    Merry Christmas from the South Oregon Coast

    —alan

  • Dennis

    Hi,

    Does anyone know how to do a batch conversion in osx? If have couple of hundred Wordperfect docs, that i’d like to convert to .doc.

    opening each one in Abiword doesn’t sound to good. Could Automator be of help you think? please email me

  • http://www.robcottingham.ca/roblog Rob

    Abiword, sadly, isn’t scriptable, so Automator won’t work with it.

    If anyone has any ideas for Dennis (or can correct me on this), please post here and I’ll pass the word on by e-mail.

  • scott

    Awsome!
    Just what I needed!!
    Thanks!!!

  • Jason

    You are a life saver! Thanks for posting this information!

  • http://www.artographystudio.com Joseph

    Worked for ME! Thanks.

    It should be noted that the DL is 8MB (now 10MB) and the actual application is a whopping 33MB! But it is speedy and did the trick. Looks like a nice slick app!

    Thanks Rob.

    joe

  • Frank

    Rob: You are a bloomin’ genius. Where have you been all my professional life? Thanks for leading me to AbiWord. I get letters to the editor all the time in the dopey old wpd format, and have to try to explain to computer non-literates how to “cut and paste” the letter into the txt of the email. OMG. My life will never be the same.

  • Ezra Friedman

    You da Man Rob

  • ShaSpleen

    Thanks for the tip

  • http://www.thexgrid.net D ryan

    Rob – You ROCK! I just got back from meeting with a client who isn’t very technical, and sure enough there was an email (1 of 8) that had a .wpd attached. I thought for sure I was going to have to call them and walk them through the process of copy+paste into an email message (which is what I originally asked for) and found your site. I then went and downloaded AbiWord and it worked great! I had already tried MS Word, AppleWorks, TextEdit and BBEdit, but it all looked the same! Thank you!

  • bj

    NeoOffice, the non-X11 (ie. native OS X) branch of OpenOffice, also comes with WordPerfect filters.

  • http://www.robcottingham.ca/roblog Rob

    Good point: if you already have NeoOffice, try opening your WordPerfect doc in that program. (It’s a 130 MB download, though, so if all you want to do is WordPerfect conversions, AbiWord at less than one-twentieth that size is still probably a more convenient approach.)

  • Pastor Scott

    A church member sent me a file in the dreaded .wpd and nothing on my OS X could open it, even Office for MAc 2004 didn’t have a clue. Thanks for the help! To God be the glory!

    “For God so loved the world He gave us His Son, that whoever believes in him should not perisg but have everlasting life.” John 3:16

  • http://www.robcottingham.ca/roblog Rob

    Well, if a balding atheist can get in on the scripture-quoting, “Do to others that which you would have them do to you.” (Matthew 7:12)

    Applying this to document formats, say you’re a WordPerfect user. If you want people to send you documents you can read, then do the same for them. If you use an off-the-beaten-path word processor, save the files you want to share in a universal format; it’s only polite.

  • Dan in New Jersey

    Thanks, just the ticket. Choreographer sent me narration text to do music to and damned if I couldn’t open that .wpd ’til I found your site and the link. Thanks!

    My late friend Andy Cemelli was the last great hope for WordPerfect on the Mac; alas, WordPerfect dropped the mac and he moved on to other projects before moving on…

  • Charles Maris

    THANKS! I had to convert a real estate contract that arrived today as a .WPD. I googled the problem, found this thread, and downloaded ABIword, which worked like a charm. (Why do lawyers still use WordPerfect?) You’re a lifesaver!

  • Rob Sjoberg

    Good stuff! We get legals we have to print in our paper. I was opening the *.wpd files in Office XP running under Virtual PC on an iBook (we’re all Mac). Thanks to your tip on ABIword, life is much simpler now.

  • Dan Ashley

    Charles Maris asked “Why do lawyers still use WordPerfect?”

    My law firm converted to Word. I use Word on the PC at work, Word and Pages on the Mac at home, and occasionally I still use Word Perfect on the old clunker PC in the attic. Here is my opinion why some lawyers who use Windows still prefer WordPerfect over Microsoft Word:

    * The need to exchange files with others outside their business is lower than in other businesses such as advertising, newspaper publishing, etc. Accordingly, interoperability (the primary advantage of Microsoft Word) is of less importance to many lawyers.
    * Ease of learning, also a plus of Word, is of less importance to lawyers. Whatever tool they use, they will master, since words are the lawyer’s only stock in trade. Ease of use is more important than ease of learning, and many feel that WordPerfect has the advantage.
    * WordPerfect puts onto the screen exactly what you typed. None of that “helpful” automatic stuff modern word processors provide! If you typed “Plaintiff alleges in paragraph (c) that my client . . . ” then WordPerfect will not transform the (c) into a copyright symbol. Similarly, if you type an asterisk, some text, a hard return, then another asterisk, that is what you get, instead of an automated bulleted list. Word can turn all these “features” off. But each time your Windows PC crashes, they are reset to the default “on” position.
    * Lawyers often indent. Indent is one keystroke in WordPerfect. Fast and simple! In Word, you can indent by fiddling and futzing styles or other mousey tools.
    * WordPerfect provided precise control, entered from your keyboard. Word uses styles (much like CSS in web pages). The Word approach is wonderful for standard formats to be re-used over and over. The WordPerfect method is wonderful for one-off editing.
    * WordPerfect’s Reveal Codes is easier to use than Word’s Reveal Formatting. But Word’s approach is easier to learn, and is more consistent with the way modern applications work. Since the written document is the lawyer’s stock in trade, lawyers will often prefer ease and speed of use, over ease of learning.
    * WordPerfect uses the same file format even though versions change over time. If one person in your firm upgrades to the latest and greatest, all the others can inter-operate without being forced to upgrade.
    -Dan Ashley

  • John Haniotis

    Did you know that the Legal field still uses WordPerfect? Of course you did but I had forgotten till recently when my lawyer sent me a .wpd doc to review. After several fruitless attempts to open with Word, Preview and Text Editor, I went to the web for ideas and came across this article on Rob Cottingham’s web site. AbiWord worked great-thank you!
    John Haniotis

  • Stephen avery

    I just wanted to say thanks. Abiword is the solution to my problems. I had hundreds of documents in wpd format from my first 3 years at college. With portfolios coming up this year, this was a great solution to helping me get them all open and ready to use on my new mac. thanks again!

  • Hamilton Williams

    Just wanted to add my $0.02 to the blog. I received a .wpd file from my Mom’s attorney, and of course could not open it in Word. Your site led me to Abi.

    worked fine.

    Keep this site up!

  • Tony

    Phenomenal little word processor, and it’s free? Many law offices unfortunately still use WP b/c their legal secretaries/office managers learned on it and prefer it. They’re usually the ones who do all the typing.

  • Patri Friedman

    Thanks! Just what I was looking for.

  • Andrew Mitchell

    Thanks! The pointer to AbiWord saved my day!

  • http://www.angryf.com Angryf

    thanks.. I love to see people offering helpful advise that pops up FAST and EARLY on the google search… cheers to you mate

  • Ira M. Siegel

    I found this site when an attorney sent a wpd file to me. Thanks for the tips. Here’s an update on attorney usage of word processing programs: I am an attorney and the vast majority of attorneys I deal with at other firms use MS Word, not WordPerfect, and have done so for many years.

  • Neil

    Thanks… worked great… just what I needed.

  • http://www.therapytoronto.ca Stephen van Beek

    what a great fix this has proven to be in a dingle session!

    Thanks for the tip Rob!~

    Stephen

  • Dia

    Just wanted to say thanks. My professor used word perfect (strange) and your post really helped me out. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to open our textbook for the semester! Really appreciate it.

  • Helene

    Yay! Thanks for the tip. I wasn’t relishing the idea of going back to my client to see if we could find another version of his document!!!

  • Alan

    The simplest solution to this and many similar problems is http://www.media-convert.com. It’s a free browser-based service. You can convert almost anything to almost anything else.

  • Ryan

    Rob, Thanks so much for the how to. It was a huge help to stumble upon your article…even years after you wrote it!

  • http://www.wolffpak.us Dedra

    Thanks from another PC to Mac switcher. I had wpd files from 10 years ago and this worked without a hitch. I am glad your archive works and kept this post on the web.

  • Blenk

    Hi Rob,

    Is there any obvious reason that AbiWord would close down every time I try to open my wpd files? It opens Word files and all others fine, but shuts down automatically when i try the wpds…

    Any ideas anyone?

    Thanks,

    Blenk

  • Kaptaink

    I’ve had the same problem as Blenk. Which is too bad because I got really excited that this would work for me. I also had a problem using media-convert mentioned above. I’m now wondering if there is something wrong with the file I’m trying to open.

  • Jack

    Thank you soooo much for this website! Running OS X it took less than 10 seconds to open an application that will open all the documents from when I had to use Word Perfect. Love Mac, Love this site and its help.

  • Piero

    wow thanks for having this. we recieved an important wpd that said damaged or corrupt. abiword did open it, even on our 400mhz g4 from 2000! nice
    thanks a zillion

  • Pedro

    Abiword link no longer works. Anyone have a downloadable copy?

  • http://www.robcottingham.ca/ Rob Cottingham

    Thanks for the heads-up, Pedro. I’ve updated the link (they changed the site’s domain name).

  • joe

    Check out openoffice – it just opened my .wpd file without any trouble.

  • macspock

    Fantastic! I had all these old Corel files, usless! Voila! AbiWord to the rescue! Thanks a million!

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Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. Please attribute to Rob Cottingham with a link to the content's original page on this web site. For more information, contact Rob at rob@robcottingham.ca.

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