Photo Story 3 on Windows 11

Photo Story 3 came out in 2004 as a free download for Windows XP. Microsoft stopped offering it years ago and never made a newer version, so Windows 11 has nothing of its own that opens a Photo Story project. What to do next depends on which you need: a new slideshow, or a way to keep an old one.

Getting Photo Story 3 itself running

Microsoft no longer offers the installer, so any copy online comes from a third-party download site, and I can't vouch for those. Some people do get it installed on Windows 10 and 11 from an installer they kept. It was written for Windows XP, though, and nobody fixes it when something breaks. If you have it working, you can still finish a project: the last step saves a WMV video, which any video converter turns into an MP4.

Making a new slideshow on Windows 11

Windows 11's own video editor is Clipchamp, built in since 2022 and in the Start menu. It makes a video from photos you add, with music, text and transitions, and it asks you to sign in with a Microsoft account first. The Photos app used to have a simpler Video Editor. The current Photos app dropped it, and Microsoft keeps the older app in the Microsoft Store as Photos Legacy for people who want it back.

Neither of them opens a .wp3. They start from loose pictures, so an old Photo Story would have to be rebuilt by hand, slide by slide.

Opening an old Photo Story project on Windows 11

Drop the .wp3 on the converter in Edge or Chrome. It reads the project in the browser, lists the slides with their captions and narration, and plays the slideshow with its pan and zoom. The preview and a zip of all the photos and sound are free, and saving it as an MP4 video is a one-time US$19. Nothing is uploaded, and there is nothing to install.

Old Photo Story videos

A WMV that Photo Story saved years ago is already a finished video, and Windows 11 still plays it in Media Player. If a phone, a TV or a website will not take it, any video converter makes an MP4 of it. You only need the .wp3 if the video is lost or you want a sharper copy: the project holds the original pictures, and Photo Story's videos were often saved small.