Opening old Lotus 1-2-3 files

Here’s a useful thing I found.  I have some very old inventory lists that I needed to open.

They were prepared in Lotus 1-2-3 (remember that?) and had file extensions .WKS and .WK1.  Excel in Office 2007 did not recognize them and Windows had no application associated with them.

I Googled for a free conversion utility and didn’t see anything useful near the top of the list.  So I moved them to a different PC that had Open Office installed on it, and it recognized both extensions.

Open OO, choose ‘Open a document’, navigate to the WKS file, and save as Excel.

Job done.

Welcome to OpenOffice.org indeed!

As Open Office is free, it’s worth tucking that little nugget away in the back of your mind.  Let’s hope Oracle doesn’t bin OO now they’ve bought Sun – better download a copy now, just in case.

Roy

PS Note to self – never assume you won’t want those old files again!