Conversion Library Plus: Search the Lotus Spreadsheets You Converted

The converted pile is still opaque

A successful Lotus conversion job is easy to celebrate. The green checkmarks appear, the output folder fills with XLSX, PDF, and CSV, and the original .wk1 or .wk3 files can stay untouched on the share. Then someone asks for last year’s plant costing sheet, or the SKU that only appeared in a footnote on a 1998 forecast, and File Explorer is no help. Filenames were opaque in Lotus. They are still opaque after conversion.

That is the quiet failure mode. The archive is modern. It is still a pile. You open twenty workbooks by hand because the phrase you remember is inside a sheet, not in the filename.

A private library of the files you converted

You converted the files. Now make them usable.

Conversion Library turns your output folder into something you can search and navigate — without leaving this PC. Conversion Library Plus is your private library of the files you converted — search, preview, bookmark, and organize them on this PC. Nothing is uploaded. It is not a cloud product and not a shared workspace. It is a window over the folders already on this machine.

Open the library on the folder Lotus Converter just wrote (or on any earlier output). The private library window indexes those files locally and keeps the index on this PC. You can keep more than one library: rename a folder’s entry, pin the ones you return to, and remove a library from the rail when that project is done. Removing it from the rail does not delete the files on disk.

Search the cells, not just the filenames

The local full-text index reads converted XLSX, PDF, HTML, Markdown, and CSV so a plant code, a vendor name, or a quoted phrase such as "FY1998 capacity" can surface the right workbook. Refine narrows a result set by type or folder when the first hit list is too wide. That is ordinary desktop search over your output, not a remote service.

When a query is one you will run again, every rate table, every BOM extract, every sheet that mentions a closed plant, save it. Saved searches are named collections on that library. One click reapplies the query and any tag you attached. History records the opens, indexes, conversion batches, saved-search runs, and review-pack exports so you can see what you already did on this PC.

Preview, bookmark, and see how files connect

In-app preview tabs open a converted spreadsheet or document without a round trip through Excel for every glance. Find-in-document works inside the tab you already have open. Bookmark the workbooks that matter and put them in bookmark groups, "audit 2024," "line 3 costing," "data room extras", so the next session starts from a short list instead of a thousand-file tree.

Tags and the relationship graph are local navigation: how files on disk share names, folders, and the terms the index already extracted. They are not an agent and they do not leave this PC. Use them to jump from a converted PDF snapshot to the XLSX that produced it, or from one fiscal folder to the related workbook sitting next to it.

Hand someone a review pack, not a folder dump

When a reviewer needs a subset: the hits for a quoted phrase, the bookmarked costing sheets, a multi-select from search, export a review pack. The library copies those files (relative paths preserved when it can), then writes index.csv and summary.md into the pack. That is a package you can put on a share or attach to a ticket without giving someone your entire output tree.

From Conversion Complete to Welcome back

When a batch finishes, Conversion Complete offers Open in Conversion Library as the primary action for Plus: index the new files and focus this batch. View output folder still opens Explorer. A checkbox, Always open Library after convert, remembers the preference on this PC. The completion dialog stays visible so the counts and the preference remain in view.

The next time you open the library with no folder specified, Welcome back offers Resume library on the last or pinned library, or Browse folder if you want a different tree. Standard users see the Plus card on that same completion dialog; Just see the files still opens Explorer. The library window itself stays locked until a Plus key is entered.

Standard converts. Plus unlocks the library.

Standard converts the files. Plus unlocks Conversion Library so you can search and navigate what you converted. Same MSI, Plus key. You do not install a second product. Lotus Converter Standard remains the converter for .123, .wk1, .wk3, .wk4, and related workbook extensions to XLSX, PDF, CSV, HTML, Markdown, and XLS. The Plus add-on is $29.95 one-time and unlocks the private library window on this PC.

If you only needed a handful of XLSX files for a single close, Standard may be enough. If you converted a decade of plant or ledger history and expect to live with those files afterward, the library is where the value shows up.