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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 PC somewhere, or maybe the document is an endearing short story written in your not-so-distant youth. Anyway, what matters is that you’ve got this mysterious file and you need an application to open it.

At first it might appear like you’re out of luck - the .WPS file extension has long since been obsolete and no modern office package uses it anymore. The original application that stored files 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 a surprising display of megacorporative benevolence, Microsoft has provided 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 easily fathomable reason, you can’t use Word to open the file, there are other WPS programs out there 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.

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