If the document is simple, and doesn't use features introduced after WordStar 4, such as paragraph styles, you may just be left with some formatting and other code in the converted result, otherwise you could be left with an unusable result.John Kiernan's web site - Advice on using DOS If you use the Windows 3 version of the converter to convert files from WordStar versions later than version 4, the file preview may not display the file contents. The 16-bit (Windows 3.x) version is designed for WordStar 4 files, but will also cope with earlier WordStar versions. The converter is available in two versions as detailed below: The HABit WordStar Converter WSCONV runs in Windows rather than DOS, so may be an easier alternative for non-DOS users who need access to old WordStar files. Point at the symbols for more details on a specific feature. The conversions are summarised in the tables below. There is also a batch conversion option to convert all files with the same file extension in a directory. HTML conversions use special HTML characters to display characters in the Extended ASCII range

Where there isn't a matching character in the normal Windows fonts the nearest equivalent will be used. The Convert Extended Characters (ECS) option will convert the WordStar for DOS IBM extended character set to the Windows ANSI character set based on Latin-1 coding. This option is only applicable to plain text output, not HTML. The keep layout option will try to preserve formatting (see the table below). In addition to the two output formats, there are two conversion options:

Output can be in plain text or HTML, the HTML output preserving character attributes such as boldface, etc. This version of the converter (updated March 2005) has support for most DOS WordStar versions including WordStar 2000. Full details for installation and use are included in the downloads. The program gives options for replacing soft-spaces, etc., with hard-spaces to keep the layout with a fixed-pitch font, and for converting WordStar extended characters to the Windows equivalent. This is the 32-bit version of the program:

Wordstar ms dos download