Preface

WordPerfect 7 is a magnificent word processor that is unfortunately plagued by some minor release issues. Said problem being that it comes in a multitude of versions, which don’t seem to always work past Windows 95. That is, almost.

While the WPDOS website details which one of these is capable of running under select operating systems, it isn’t exactly a known resource for people outside the WP community. As luck would have it, I too have ended up purchasing the exact wrong one some time ago, and came to realize this only when the installer failed on me. However, me being a hard-headed idiot, I refused to believe I’ve wasted money, and tried every trick I could think of to ease my burning regret. Miraculously enough, I’ve managed to find a solution.

The Data

Because of the nature of the problem, I feel the need to divulge the following information in case someone comes after me with an ax:

OS used: Windows XP Service Pack 2 (32 bit)Hardware: Dell Latitude D505 Laptop, WordPerfect version: 7.0.1.9 from the WordPerfect Suite For Windows 95 CD

I’m not going to give you any guarantees that this will work on your system, but it’s definitely worth a try if you’re out of options, or simply don’t want to use a Virtual Machine to emulate older Windows.

The Solution & Misc Instructions

Firstly, after inserting the CD you will need to navigate to the setup.exe, right click on properties and change compatibility mode to Windows 95. Run & Install, then navigate to the destination folder.

You will notice that there will be quite a lot of files missing, as not all of them made it over to your drive. Fix this by copying the contents of Corel/Office7 from the CD here, allowing Windows to overwrite them. Now, you will need to change the compatibility mode for WordPerfect 7 (WPWIN.exe) under C:/Corel/Office7/WPWin7/ (default install location) to use Windows NT as anything else will just instantly crash it.

While this will allow you to fully use the software, it comes with 2 cumbersome issues:

The Open and Save (as) dialogues will crash the software.

However, the good news is that you can work around this simply by opening existing files via Left Click & Right Click + Open with WordPerfect 7, and save with the Floppy Icon or the keyboard shortcuts of CTRL + S without any hitch. I do recommend putting these files into C:/Myfiles as a precaution though, while making sure that the WP7 file settings point to this direction as the default save folder (aka don’t change it, as it should be that).

You can simply reuse copies of the sample files that come with the software and rename them in Windows, but I’ve also attached an empty 6.1 document just in case.

Download the empty WordPerfect file

Notes

Obviously, this isn’t the optimal solution, as you should seek out the version that works on Windows NT based systems in the first place, but sometimes that will be an impossible mission. As far as I can tell, the reason why the software crashes is because the save / open dialogues are using a custom shell (Quickfinder) instead of the Windows one. If by chance there’s a way to change this (later versions apparently have settings for this in the preferences, but not here) I think the problem would be fully solved.