Each year I get two or three patrons who want to print out documents created in Micorsoft "Works" (not Word). The file extension is WPS. Works is a cheapo document creation program that pops up every now and then. Up until now, we didnt have any program that would open up documents with that file extension. They will not open up in MS Word, Wordpad, Notepad, or OpenOffice.
On Monday I had a desperate student with a Works doc that he had to print.
Through a fluke I discovered that Works files Can be opend by, of all things, Microsoft Publisher (part of the MS 2003 bundle on all our re-imaged Dells). When I was helping a student, we found that Publisher would open the document but then messed up the formatting. However, we were then able to save it as a Word Doc. and that fixed 90% of the formatting problems. The student was able to make a few changed and print it.
So, the work around for opening files with a WPS extensino is: open it in MS Publisher, then save it ("Save As") a Word document. After that the patron can do whatever they like with the file in Word.
Posted by Allen-T at October 4, 2006 9:15 AM