Read WPD (WordPerfect) files in .NET

Question

I need a library that will allow reading WPD files in .NET environment.

So far I've only found libwpd.

That seems to be a native library and no documentation is available for using it with .NET Interop.

Another solution would be using a command-line converter to another, more common format (e.g. RTF, HTML or ODT), but I can't find such converter either.

Can anyone help?

Answer 1

It turns out Corel doesn't provide dlls to download and they must be generated for each version of WordPerfect. I found the relevant information here:

.NET-Programming-Interop-Assemblies on wpuniverse.com

1. Find the *.tlb associated with your version of WordPerfect, mine was located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Corel\WordPerfect Office X6\Programs\wpwin16.tlb
2. Add a reference to the *.tlb in VisualStudio and it will generate a Interop.WordPerfect.dll file

3. Put a using statement like this in your file: using WordPerfect; and do something like this:

   PerfectScript WPScript = null;
   WPScript = new PerfectScript();
   WPScript.FileOpen(*filepath*);
   WPScript.SelectOff();
   WPScript.PosDocVeryTop();
   WPScript.SearchString(*FindText*);
   

There is intellisense available and the above link to wpuniverse should help.

Answer 2

After struggling to do just this for a long time using the awful and incomplete PerfectScript interface, I developed a custom reader to parse wpd files into most of the functions and text found in a wpd file. WP_Reader is a C# library that can be easily used to extract most everything contained in a WordPerfect document.

However, WP_Reader won't do you much good until you study and understand the WP6+ file specification. You still have to write your own custom tokenizer to deconstruct the file into something useful. For a detailed introduction to how the library can be used, visit WPUniverse Forums

No need to have WordPerfect installed.

Licensed under GNU Lesser General Public License.

I know this may seem like self-promotion, but 5 years ago, there was nothing at all that could be used, except try to make libwpd work on .NET. Now, anybody with a semblance of programming skills can extract a wpd document.