Opening a Photo Story 3 project on Windows 11 or a Mac
Photo Story 3 was a free Windows XP program from 2004. Microsoft stopped offering it long ago, and it never existed for the Mac. So a .wp3 file found today usually has no program left that opens it.
The good news is that the project file is self-contained. When Photo Story saved a project, it copied every picture into the .wp3 along with the narration you recorded and any music you added. Here are the ways to get it back, from least to most effort.
Turn it into a video in the browser
Drop the .wp3 on the converter. It reads the project right there in the browser on Windows, macOS, Linux or a Chromebook, lists the slides with their captions and narration, and plays a preview with the pan and zoom. The preview and a zip of all the photos and sound are free. Saving the finished MP4 is a one-time US$19.
Unpack the photos yourself
A .wp3 is a Microsoft Cabinet archive with a different extension. On Windows, make a copy of the file, rename the copy from .wp3 to .cab, and double-click it. File Explorer shows what is inside: the pictures numbered from 0 (0.jpg, 1.png and so on), the narration as narration0.wav, narration1.wav, any music as SoundTrack0.mp3, and a file called project.xml. Select them and copy them out. 7-Zip opens the file without renaming it. On a Mac, The Unarchiver reads cabinet files.
That gets you the raw material but not the slideshow. The order, timing, pan and zoom, transitions and captions are all in project.xml, and nothing else reads it. In the projects I have looked at, the pictures inside were the full-size originals, so this is also a way to recover photos you thought were lost.
Run Photo Story 3 again
Some people still get Photo Story 3 running on Windows 10 or 11 from an installer they kept. Microsoft no longer offers the download, so copies online come from third-party sites, and I can't vouch for those. If you do have it working, open the project and go through to the last step, which saves a WMV video, then convert the WMV to MP4 with any video converter. There is no way to run it on a Mac short of a Windows virtual machine.
If pictures are missing
Because Photo Story copies everything into the .wp3 when it saves, a project moved to another computer normally still has every picture. If the converter says one is missing, the file was most likely cut short while being copied or downloaded. Compare its size with the original if you still have it, and try the original.
Common questions
Can I open a .wp3 file without Photo Story 3?
Yes. A .wp3 is a cabinet archive, so any tool that reads .cab files can unpack the pictures and narration, and Slideback rebuilds the whole slideshow in a web browser and saves it as an MP4.
Does the narration come back?
Yes. Photo Story keeps the narration you recorded inside the .wp3 as one WAV file per slide, and the preview and the MP4 both play it under the right slide.
Does it work on a Mac or a Chromebook?
Yes. Opening the project, the preview and the zip of photos work in any current browser. The MP4 export needs the browser's built-in video encoder, which current Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari have, on Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS.
Is my project uploaded anywhere?
No. The file is read by code running in your browser tab and never leaves your computer.