wv converts files written by Word 2000, 97, 95, and 6 (known internally as Word 9, 8, 7, and 6) to HTML or LaTeX. Word 2 documents can still be converted to plain text but will lack formatting.

Other programs can use wv as a library to convert Word documents to other formats. AbiWord uses it as its Word importer, and KWord uses concepts and code from wv in theirs.