WordPerfect was created by Corel the makers of CorelDraw for Mac although like WordPerfect, Corel discontinued the product many years ago. Corel recently brought back CorelDRAW for Mac but it seems they have no plans to release WordPerfect on Mac again.
If you have a lot of old WordPerfect files from years ago that you need to open in macOS or a PC user has sent you documents in the WPD format, this is obviously a problem.
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The good news is there are still plenty of ways to open WordPerfect files on a Mac although it’s not quite as simple as for Windows users. Even if a PC user doesn’t have WordPerfect installed, they can open them in Microsoft Word as instructed by Microsoft here.
Alternatively, Windows users can even simply change the WPD file extension to DOC and open it in Word.
In the Mac version of Microsoft Word, neither of these methods work but there are other workarounds and apps that you can use instead.
Here’s some easy ways to open WordPerfect files on a Mac.
If you’ve got a Gmail account, the simplest thing to to do is email yourself the WordPerfect document and Gmail will allow you to view the contents of the attachment.
When you click on the attachment, Gmail will also give you some options to open and edit the document with third party apps such as CloudConvert, DocHub and Google Drive.
NeoOffice is an open source alternative to Microsoft Word for Mac and a Mac oriented adaptation of the free office suite OpenOffice.
NeoOffice isn’t as flashy as Microsoft Word but it’s free to use and opens many different format of files including those in WordPerfect format.
NeoOffice supports the following formats:
WordPerfect 4.2 DOS (.wp)
WordPerfect 5.1 DOS/Win (.wp)
WordPerfect 6.0-12.0 DOS/Win (.wpd)
WordPerfect for Macintosh 3.5e (WPD4)
WordPerfect for Macintosh 3.0-3.5.4 (WPD3)
WordPerfect for Macintosh 2.1 (WPD2)
WordPerfect for Macintosh 2.0.x (WPD2)
WordPerfect for Macintosh 1.0.x (WPD0)
Note that the free version of NeoOffice will only let you open documents but not save them. However, the Classic Edition is just $15 and allows you to fully edit and save documents.
LibreOffice is another free alternative to Microsoft Office that like NeoOffice, can open documents in WPD format.
It’s extremely easy to open WordPerfect document in LibreOffice. Simply go to the File menu and browse to the WordPerfect document on your Mac.
WordPerfect Document Viewer is a simple app that allows you to open WordPerfect files on a Mac.
It’s not free but it’s available from the Mac App Store for just $4.99 which is worth paying if you regularly just need to read WPD documents.
There are various online conversion tools which can convert WPD files to another format such as DOC that you can open in other applications.
One option is CloudConvert which can convert WordPerfect files in WPD format to many other formats. Another option is Zamzar which can convert WPD files to DOC that you can then open in Microsoft Word.
Google Docs cannot open WordPerfect documents on Mac. The only google product that can preview WPD files is Gmail. However, Google Docs will offer you the possibility of converting the document via CloudConvert or DocHub. DocHub doesn’t work for WPD files but CloudConvert will.
If all of the above options fail and you can’t open the WordPerfect files on your Mac for any reason, you can use your iPad or iPhone to open WordPerfect files.
There is a WordPerfect viewer for iPad and WordPerfect Viewer for iPhone which are official Corel products and allow you to open (but not edit) WPD documents.
Finally, the best solution is to install Windows on your Mac so that you can run WordPerfect on your Mac too.
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