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Opening or Converting WordPerfect Files

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Some faculty and staff members of the law school use Corel WordPerfect as their word processing software, or may have older documents still in this format. WordPerfect was pervasive in legal and academic settings for many years (most notably for its "reveal codes" feature that provides a handy view into the formatting applied to text).

Students may find that their Word will not convert a WordPerfect document that they need to read. For instance, the current version of Word for Mac does not import WordPerfect documents. If you use a Windows laptop and double-clicking on the document doesn't open it in Word, try using the File Open feature inside Word; you may need to select "All File Types" in the Open File dialog window.

If the problem persists, you may wish to use one of our public access PC computers to convert the WordPerfect document to Word.

If you wish to pursue a solution on your own computer (and Word doesn't open the file for you), see below.

Windows Users: Install OpenOffice

OpenOffice is an open source suite that can read WordPerfect documents. Download it from the OpenOffice web site.

Macintosh Users: Install NeoOffice

There is no version of WordPerfect currently made for Mac. NeoOffice is a version of OpenOffice for Macs, and it can open WordPerfect documents. Download it from the NeoOffice web site. Note that the "free" version of NeoOffice does not save files, but you can select and copy out the contents of documents.

Mac users may also wish to note also that there is an inexpensive Mac application called WPD Wizard, available through the Macintosh App Store, that can open WordPerfect files. One caveat is that footnotes are recognized and visible, but may not be kept in footnote format.