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Jan. 8th, 2023 03:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mad_madam_mSo I was chatting with kalira last night and we got to talking about older file formats and programs (because we started writing on Ye Olde Computers), and I mentioned how my very first fics are all in .wri format, which was the old Microsoft Write program from like...Windows 3.1. I had converted a couple of those old documents to .doc and .rtf back in the early aughts, but there were probably 6 or 7 that I’d never converted, which was Not Great as time marched on and .wri files became deprecated.
Over the past ~10 years, literally nothing I have tried would open those files; all the Microsoft stuff I can find basically says to use WordPad, which will (technically) open the files, but they are chock-full of so many random characters that they’re virtually unusable. I figured I’d have to manually pull the content out of each one, but as these are all novel-length stories...uh...that was going to be an Intensive Process.
Anyway, after that, I woke up this morning thinking that, hey, it’s been a few years since I’ve tried; I should search again and see if I can find anything that can open .wri files so I can save them in a newer, readable format.
What I found was an article that said, basically, “try LibreOffice.” The most recent review I found said that it would open most legacy file types, and honestly as long as it would 1) open them in a readable format and 2) let me copy-paste them into a new Word doc, then I was going to be a happy camper.
So I installed it, figuring what the hell, and used it to open the oldest .wri file on my system, a Star Wars fic.
And for the first time in nearly 20 years, I could READ MY FIRST FANFIC.
I’ve now opened and saved all of those old files as .docx files, so God willing, they should be readable for a long time to come.
So this is just a reminder: if you have old files that you haven’t converted to a newer format, do that before you (potentially) lose that ability entirely. And if you have legacy file types like .wri files specifically, give LibreOffice a try to get them open again.
kalira last night and we got to talking about older file formats and programs (because we started writing on Ye Olde Computers), and I mentioned how my very first fics are all in .wri format, which was the old Microsoft Write program from like...Windows 3.1. I had converted a couple of those old documents to .doc and .rtf back in the early aughts, but there were probably 6 or 7 that I’d never converted, which was Not Great as time marched on and .wri files became deprecated.Over the past ~10 years, literally nothing I have tried would open those files; all the Microsoft stuff I can find basically says to use WordPad, which will (technically) open the files, but they are chock-full of so many random characters that they’re virtually unusable. I figured I’d have to manually pull the content out of each one, but as these are all novel-length stories...uh...that was going to be an Intensive Process.
Anyway, after that, I woke up this morning thinking that, hey, it’s been a few years since I’ve tried; I should search again and see if I can find anything that can open .wri files so I can save them in a newer, readable format.
What I found was an article that said, basically, “try LibreOffice.” The most recent review I found said that it would open most legacy file types, and honestly as long as it would 1) open them in a readable format and 2) let me copy-paste them into a new Word doc, then I was going to be a happy camper.
So I installed it, figuring what the hell, and used it to open the oldest .wri file on my system, a Star Wars fic.
And for the first time in nearly 20 years, I could READ MY FIRST FANFIC.
I’ve now opened and saved all of those old files as .docx files, so God willing, they should be readable for a long time to come.
So this is just a reminder: if you have old files that you haven’t converted to a newer format, do that before you (potentially) lose that ability entirely. And if you have legacy file types like .wri files specifically, give LibreOffice a try to get them open again.
