You probably should ditch MS Works since its word processing files are not easily compatible with MS Word. There are conversion programs from Microsoft that allows Word to read older MS Works files but then I save them in Word format. The home and student edition of Word is not very expensive and if you know a high school, college student or teacher they can often get discounted copies of MS Office. If you do not want to spend the money for MS Office, Open Office can be downloaded for free and saves files in a Word format.
Open Office is a good deal better than MS Works but just slightly behind MS Office in certain categories. It’s an awesome product for free!