Exporting Appleworks Data

ASCII (that's capital "i" not 1) from AppleWorks is a tab-delimited text file. It would be rare to find a text, spreadsheet or database program (other than Bento v1) that can't open one. I just exported an old AppleWorks database to ASCII that I opened in several word processing programs & in Numbers. The only problem I had was the order of the tabbed data was not the same as displayed in list view in AppleWorks. That problem probably is caused by me rearranging the columns several times years ago.

As for getting the data into Bento, I can't help. I tried both versions & found it very lacking as a database. I suggest asking in the Bento forums where you may find someone who has successfully converted an AppleWorks database to Bento.

The process is, Save As ASCII text; change (or add) the extension to .tab; import into Bento (which you will find very limited compared to AW).

if you are having a problem with the 'Save As': try dragging the saved file to TextEdit: you should see the contents of the database (though of course with no useful layout). Is this the case? and if not, what do you see?

While you may be frustrated with your failed attempts to migrate to Bento, it is equally frustrating when you don't respond to specific questions posed by those willing to donate their time and energy to help resolve your problem.

Presumably you mean that when you save as ASCII and then open the saved file in Appleworks you get a blank spreadsheet form? What do you see (if anything) if you drag the saved file to the TextEdit icon?

No where did you say that you were opening the saved ASCII text file in AppleWorks & getting a blank spreadsheet. This actually makes sense as AppleWorks will "see" a file with a lot of tabs as a spreadsheet. You can always set the file type to word processing or database in the open dialog box. This is a very common problem with text files saved from Word & opened in AppleWorks as Word defaults with tabs every half inch.

I don't understand why you're reopening the text file in AppleWorks. If you're double-clicking it your Mac will open it with AppleWorks by default as that is the program that created it. I believe that to get this data into Bento you need to tell Bento to import it from within Bento. You could try right- or control-clicking the file & choosing to open it with Bento from the contextual menu, but I don't know how that would work.

I really wish I could see what you're doing & why. In reading (& re-reading) your original post, I understood you to mean you want to import the data you have in an AppleWorks document into Bento. So I still don't understand why you are reopening the saved file in AppleWorks or dragging the text file to TextEdit.

There is no need to open the text file once it is saved. See this Bento article on how to import the file.

Peggy: I asked him to open the file in TextEdit as a diagnostic procedure, not as part of the method to import into Bento. Something is going wrong, because what should happen is: he opens a database: he saves it as ASCII; when opened in TexEdit he should see the data separated by tabs and returns. What he is seeing is an Appleworks format document opened in TextEdit, which shows the AW formatting codes. This means that the save to ASCII is not working as expected and is saving as an AW file.

itgon: try this - open you database. Make sure that the tab order is as you want it. Click within a record but outside a field to highlight the record. Hit command-a, then hit command-c. Now open a new TextEdit document and hit command-v. With luck you should now see the data in TextEdit without the formatting garbage. Save.

Change the extension (or add the extension) of this TextEdit file to '.tab'. Now you should be able to import it into Bento.

"As I said, every time I do the "save as" procedure I get a blank spreadsheet form. This is so frustrating! can someone suggest what I might be doing wrong?" (comments taken from two separate posts)

While I understand your frustration, and commend Roger and Peggy on their attempts to help, I also have to agree with Brie Fly—the lack of information in your posts is making it very difficult (and no doubt, frustrating) for those attempting to help.

How many records does the database document contain? Is there data in each record? Are all the records visible (ie. none are hidden) when you Save as...?

When you say 'I do the "save as" procedure', what, exactly, do you mean? Describe the process step-by-step:

1. The document "My Database [DB]" is open in AppleWorks
2. I go File > Save as...
3. The Save dialogue opens.
then what?

Regards,
Barry

Barry: he says

When I drag that file to text edit I get a new file with a lot of jumbled data.

This suggests to me that the ASCII file converter is corrupted or missing, and AW is still saving in AW format (though probably incompletely). As a way round this I suggested he select all the records, copy them, and paste them into a TextEdit file - in theory this should produce the result which the 'Save As' ought to, and the file would then import into Bento (after changing the extension to '.tab').

"This suggests to me that the ASCII file converter is corrupted or missing, and AW is still saving in AW format (though probably incompletely)."

Or that he's making an error in the Save as... procedure, which is why I asked for more detail.

Regards,
Barry

Or that he's making an error in the Save as... procedure, which is why I asked for more detail.

Yes: it's a simple enough procedure but some people can be remarkably inventive 🙂 , so it's a fair question.