However, the software was built for a different era of computing—specifically, the text-based Disk Operating System (DOS). As the world transitioned to Windows and Excel became the dominant force, Lotus struggled to adapt. By the mid-1990s, the market share had shifted decisively, and Lotus 1-2-3 began its slow march toward retirement. Yet, the spreadsheets created during its heyday—financial models, actuarial tables, and historical tax records—did not simply disappear.
You can sometimes enable support by adjusting settings in the Trust Center (File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > File Block Settings), though this is increasingly restricted on 64-bit systems. 2. LibreOffice or OpenOffice (Recommended)
To understand the importance of a viewer, one must first appreciate the ubiquity of the original file format. Released in 1983 by Lotus Development Corporation, Lotus 1-2-3 was a revolutionary integrated package. Its name derived from its three core capabilities: a spreadsheet, a graphics generator, and a database manager. Before the rise of the graphical user interface (GUI) and the dominance of Microsoft Excel, Lotus 1-2-3 was the standard by which all business productivity was measured. Its native file format, the .WK1 (and later .WK3 and .WK4 ), became a universal language of finance.
Advanced Lotus "macros" will almost never work in Excel or LibreOffice. You will only be able to view the static data and standard formulas.
Original Lotus 1-2-3 software was 32-bit (or even 16-bit) and often fails to run on modern 64-bit Windows 10 or 11.
