is word and wordperfect similar   

Wow.. that's really old. I'm sure though that somewhere out there, someone has still has a copy of it. With regards to easy of use, Word is better since it's windows-based. Word Perfect is DOS based, as far as I know, and the last time I used it was 12 years ago or so.

I haven't tried yet whether the new word processors can translate or reformat the document. But word can open word perfect files. Word Perfect was one of the best word processors back then along with WordStar. (wow, nostalgic!).

Knightrider, Word can open files saved in either WordPerfect 5.x or 6.x. Just select one of those versions as the file type. If the file was made in a later version of WordPerfect, save it as either version 5.x or 6.x first and then open in Word.

I've check WPS file extension in the net and according to http://www.fileinfo.net/extension/wps its a Microsoft Works file, I've also check ms word and it can open that document, check out file type. Better try it first if its still a valid file. Word perfect file extension is WPD.