I was working at one of my schools today and the Superintendent asked me how to get his collection of Microsoft Works files into some format that he could use - he'd switched from PC to Mac - (good move) but was a bit frustrated at the thought of re-creating files, or losing the information within them. So with a bit of head scratching I came up with a good solution.. with just a few steps to solve the problem...
First - get yourself a copy of LibreOffice it is free and as a bonus is a pretty capable replacement for the Microsoft Office suite.. Did I mention free? Some districts aren't buying Office and are using it instead.. but I digress.. Open your .wps (Works) file in LibreOffice, then go to File-Save As and select Microsoft Word 2007/2010 XML (.docx) . This saves your old .wps file as a nicely formatted modern Microsoft Word document. I was surprised how well the formatting was preserved..
This made me look really smart, and I didn't confess that I sort of stumbled into it. I've fought this problem for years and used to keep an old copy of Works on a PC just for this. Much better solution!
LibreOffice or any of the open source Office clones are certainly the way to go with this. I'm going to turn in MS Works to the Smite Tuesday section of God's Facebook page - maybe the big guy can get rid of it once and for all!
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