J
John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]
All:
Every now and again, we get requests in here for a way to convert
WordPerfect files to Microsoft Word format. If you have Microsoft Office
2004 Professional for Macintosh, read on...
If you have to do a lot of WordPerfect conversion, obviously you would look
to purchase one of the alternatives, such as a real copy of WordPerfect or a
copy of MacLink Plus.
However, for those irritating situations where you need to convert just one
document now, there is another alternative
Microsoft makes a Word 2003
"Viewer" available without charge, and it will install and run in Virtual PC
on the Mac. The Viewer is intended to allow people who don¹t have the
latest version of Word on the PC to View and Print the latest Word document
format.
I guess because it was cheaper to leave them in that work out how to take
them out, the Viewer will also handle many of the other file formats that
Word 2003 will handle: including WordPerfect! The main limitation is that
the Viewer will not allow you to create new documents or save document.
That¹s fine, we don¹t need it to...
You can get the Viewer here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=95E24C87-8732-48D5-
8689-AB826E7B8FDF&displaylang=en
1) Once installed (it¹s a chunky little 12 MB download...) you will find
that ‹ hallelujah ‹ it includes the PC version of the WordPerfect converter.
I must admit, I did not think they were still distributing that thing: after
spending a fortune on it, Microsoft never was able to get it ³perfect²,
because a Word document and a WordPerfect document are simply too dissimilar
to convert properly. But they got it ³close². Very close...
2) So, following the nice instructions, you Open your WordPerfect document
in the Word Viewer (or PC Word 2003, if you have that installed...). If you
DO have the full version of Word installed, just save the result as a Word
document and we¹re outta here. However, if you don¹t want to shell for a
full copy of Word for the PC, you have to do a little more work...
3) When the WordPerfect document opens, scroll to the end and wait for it
to complete pagination. Yes, this WILL take a while, particularly if you
tackle a 570-page change-marked law document on an iBook, as I just did.
Don¹t try to hurry it, either while it¹s opening or while it¹s paginating.
It¹s thinking very hard, you will just have to wait...
4) Now, in Word Viewer, go to the Edit menu and choose Select All. Then
choose Copy. And wait for it... It¹s re-expressing the document in an
interchange format, and it will take a while...
5) Now, from your Windows START menu, look for an application named
WordPad. It¹s usually in All Programs>Accessories. Don¹t confuse it with
Notepad ‹ Notepad has nowhere near the grunt we need. But WordPad has.
WordPad is an accessory in various flavours of Windows, but you need the one
that came with Windows 2000 or later to do the next step. Office Mac 2004
Professional includes VPC 7 and Windows XP Professional, which gives you the
latest version. Start WordPad.
6) Put your cursor into WordPad and Paste. Again, on a big document this
WILL take a while: it has to re-convert the entire thing from the transport
format into RTF.
7) Now, save from WordPad as RTF.
MacWord will open that without a problem. Immediately save it as a Word
Document (not only is RTF very large, you want Word 2004 to clean the
document up internally).
Depending on what was in the original document, you will get a very good
copy. Depending on what they got up to creating the original document, you
may even be able to use the document as is. However, WordPerfect users
typically get up to some things that are pretty horrible if done in a Word
document, such as jerking the page margins around and expressing headings
hanging over the margins. You may need to do a bit of fixing.
Regrettably, many embedded graphics won¹t make it across: but tables will if
they were simple. WordPerfect users often don¹t use Styles, but if they did
the styles will come across. They won¹t be visible in either the Viewer or
WordPad, but they will be there in the final result.
So there: an available ³free² solution, for those with Microsoft Office
2004 Professional and a bit of patience.
Hope this helps
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
Every now and again, we get requests in here for a way to convert
WordPerfect files to Microsoft Word format. If you have Microsoft Office
2004 Professional for Macintosh, read on...
If you have to do a lot of WordPerfect conversion, obviously you would look
to purchase one of the alternatives, such as a real copy of WordPerfect or a
copy of MacLink Plus.
However, for those irritating situations where you need to convert just one
document now, there is another alternative
Microsoft makes a Word 2003"Viewer" available without charge, and it will install and run in Virtual PC
on the Mac. The Viewer is intended to allow people who don¹t have the
latest version of Word on the PC to View and Print the latest Word document
format.
I guess because it was cheaper to leave them in that work out how to take
them out, the Viewer will also handle many of the other file formats that
Word 2003 will handle: including WordPerfect! The main limitation is that
the Viewer will not allow you to create new documents or save document.
That¹s fine, we don¹t need it to...
You can get the Viewer here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=95E24C87-8732-48D5-
8689-AB826E7B8FDF&displaylang=en
1) Once installed (it¹s a chunky little 12 MB download...) you will find
that ‹ hallelujah ‹ it includes the PC version of the WordPerfect converter.
I must admit, I did not think they were still distributing that thing: after
spending a fortune on it, Microsoft never was able to get it ³perfect²,
because a Word document and a WordPerfect document are simply too dissimilar
to convert properly. But they got it ³close². Very close...
2) So, following the nice instructions, you Open your WordPerfect document
in the Word Viewer (or PC Word 2003, if you have that installed...). If you
DO have the full version of Word installed, just save the result as a Word
document and we¹re outta here. However, if you don¹t want to shell for a
full copy of Word for the PC, you have to do a little more work...
3) When the WordPerfect document opens, scroll to the end and wait for it
to complete pagination. Yes, this WILL take a while, particularly if you
tackle a 570-page change-marked law document on an iBook, as I just did.
Don¹t try to hurry it, either while it¹s opening or while it¹s paginating.
It¹s thinking very hard, you will just have to wait...
4) Now, in Word Viewer, go to the Edit menu and choose Select All. Then
choose Copy. And wait for it... It¹s re-expressing the document in an
interchange format, and it will take a while...
5) Now, from your Windows START menu, look for an application named
WordPad. It¹s usually in All Programs>Accessories. Don¹t confuse it with
Notepad ‹ Notepad has nowhere near the grunt we need. But WordPad has.
WordPad is an accessory in various flavours of Windows, but you need the one
that came with Windows 2000 or later to do the next step. Office Mac 2004
Professional includes VPC 7 and Windows XP Professional, which gives you the
latest version. Start WordPad.
6) Put your cursor into WordPad and Paste. Again, on a big document this
WILL take a while: it has to re-convert the entire thing from the transport
format into RTF.
7) Now, save from WordPad as RTF.
MacWord will open that without a problem. Immediately save it as a Word
Document (not only is RTF very large, you want Word 2004 to clean the
document up internally).
Depending on what was in the original document, you will get a very good
copy. Depending on what they got up to creating the original document, you
may even be able to use the document as is. However, WordPerfect users
typically get up to some things that are pretty horrible if done in a Word
document, such as jerking the page margins around and expressing headings
hanging over the margins. You may need to do a bit of fixing.
Regrettably, many embedded graphics won¹t make it across: but tables will if
they were simple. WordPerfect users often don¹t use Styles, but if they did
the styles will come across. They won¹t be visible in either the Viewer or
WordPad, but they will be there in the final result.
So there: an available ³free² solution, for those with Microsoft Office
2004 Professional and a bit of patience.
Hope this helps
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410