A friend sent an attachment written on a relic Windows machine ending in the relic .WPS (Microsoft Works, not Word) extension.
Is there a program I might likely have on my new Mac that would open it? (Pages, Text Edit, OpenOffice, and MS Word all failed for me.) If not, what’s your opinion on a very good “Swiss Army knife” file translator that might help?
— John Russell
Your best bet -- really -- is to email the friend back and ask them very nicely to send you another copy. If they have Works they should be able to open and re-save the file in a more compatible format, like RTF, DOC maybe, or something else.
If you want to throw time and money at it instead, maybe look at MacLink Plus, http://www.dataviz.com/products/maclinkplus/ -- I've never used it, but it might do what you want.
We run into this at our Middle School where students bring in a document on a flash drive and try to print. We've had luck with "open with" the old Appleworks 6.2.9 (still works fine in Leopard) and Pages. MSWord 2004 and Office X may handle this document type, but 2008 will not - somehow it broke in the update. At least that's been our experience at school. Hope this helps