In Microsoft Office for Mac OS or Mac OS X, how can I open or convert a WordPerfect document?

Unfortunately, Microsoft Word for Mac OS and Mac OS X won't open WordPerfect 3.x documents directly. There are ways to open such documents, but it's not as simple as telling Word to open them.

If you have a copy of WordPerfect, you can use it to save the files in a format that Word can read. There may be some text attributes and formatting that need to be adjusted after the conversion, so check the file after you convert it.

If you use WordPerfect to convert the files, the best file formats to use for conversion are:

• The latest version of Word in the file format list
  
  
• A Rich Text Format (RTF) export
  
  
• A text export (if the document contains no advanced formatting features such as graphics, tables, footnotes, etc.)

To save a file in a different file format using WordPerfect, follow the instructions below:

1. Open the document using WordPerfect, and from the File menu, select Save As... .
   
   
2. When the Save As dialog box appears, find the "Save Document As:" field, and change the name of the document so that the new version of the file doesn't overwrite the old version.
   
   
3. From the pull-down menu next to "Format:", select the file format you want for the new version.
   
   
4. From the pull-down menu next to "Retain:", select the attributes of the document that you want to transfer to the new version.
   
   
5. Click the Save button.

You should be able to open the new version of the file in Word with relatively few problems.

If you'd rather not install or use WordPerfect, another option is to purchase MacLinkPlus Deluxe. Available from DataViz, MacLinkPlus is a powerful conversion utility that will translate any kind of WordPerfect document into a Word document. For more information, see the MacLinkPlus Deluxe product information page:

Note: MacLinkPlus was bundled with Mac OS 7.5.3 through 8.1. While this version will not work on documents created in WordPerfect 3.5e, it will work on documents created in older versions.