Cannot read older version of Works files

I have some wps files that some employees need to read. They were sent to us from another company and were created in 1999. It is unlikely the other company has the ability to convert them to anything else. They are from a small legal firm who have no IT support and have been pulled out of archived storage.

I have Works 9, Word 2003 & Word 2007 with converters installed but I still cannot read the files. I get the message that the files may be corrupted or are being used by another process. I have full admin access and ownership of the files.

I wondered if they were so old that modern word processors cannot read them, I understand that the Word converters only read back as far as Works 6 although I am not sure about this.

Can anyone shed any light on what version they may be and how to read them?

Thanks

 

Try This?

 

Thanks for the reply. I am familiar with the FilExt site - comes in very handy, but in this instance it only points me back to Microsoft who don't supply converters or viewers for anything older than Works 6.0.

I have a copy of Word 97 that might work, if I can find it anyway, think it fell down the back of a cupboard years ago.

 

Must have been a really old version of Works - Office 97 opens them fine as long as I add the Works 3.0 converter.

My Word versions are all service packed to the hilt so I suppose lack of legacy support from Microsoft is the problem - who'd have thought it !