Reference

WPD (WordPerfect)

WPD is the document format created by Corel WordPerfect, one of the dominant word processors of the 1980s and 1990s. It stores formatted text, and the format is still maintained by WordPerfect today, though most workflows have moved to DOCX.

Files & formatsGeneral

WPD (WordPerfect)

Also known as: .wpd file, WordPerfect document, Corel WordPerfect

Corel WordPerfect word-processing document
Common in older legal and government files
Convert to DOCX or PDF for compatibility

What a WPD file holds

A .wpd file stores formatted text — fonts, styles, tables, and layout — much like a Word .doc or .docx. WordPerfect was especially popular in legal offices for its reveal-codes editing, and many older legal and government documents survive as WPD.

WordPerfect is still sold and updated, so newer .wpd files open natively in it. To move on, you typically export or convert to DOCX or PDF for broad compatibility.

Opening old WPD files

Modern Word does not open WPD out of the box. To read one without WordPerfect, use a converter or an office suite with WordPerfect import (such as LibreOffice), then save as DOCX or PDF.

WPD files are small text documents, so they take negligible space. The reason to convert is access, not storage — an old archive of .wpd files is easy to keep but hard to open on current software.

Related terms

Keep reading the reference.

Files & formatsDOCX (Word)DOCX is the default file format for Microsoft Word documents since Word 2007. It is a ZIP package of compressed XML, so a text-heavy document stays small — but embedded photos and fonts are what actually inflate the file size.General Files & formatsPDFPDF (Portable Document Format) is a fixed-layout document format that looks the same on any device. Most PDFs are small, but scanned documents and image-heavy files can grow large, and they accumulate quietly in Downloads and the Files app.General Files & formatsRTFRTF (Rich Text Format) is a plain-text document format that encodes basic formatting — bold, italics, fonts, and colors — using readable markup. It opens in almost any word processor on any platform, which makes it a reliable lowest-common-denominator for portable formatted text.General iPhone & iPadDocuments & DataDocuments & Data is the storage an app accumulates on top of its install size — downloads, saved files, login state, and cached media. It often dwarfs the app itself, which is why a small app can occupy several gigabytes.iOSiPadOS