How to rid text docs of weird characters???

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How to rid text docs of weird characters???

Recently saved some appleworks docs as text -- or possibly I clicked to save as RTF?? -- and now when I open docs, all the weird formatting stuff shows, making document barely readable. See example below. Since I've trashed the original appleworks docs, what I can do to the new text documents to get rid of the funky characters? If I could even convert back to appleworks doc, that would be good. Here's example of funky characters I'm seeing: {\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\cocoartf949\cocoasubrtf540
{\fonttbl\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 ArialMT;\f1\fswiss\fcharset0 Helvetica;\f2\froman\fcharset0 TimesNewRomanPSMT
Thanks in advance for your help. I see enough weird/funky characters here in NYC that I don't need to see them on my Macbook!

Macbook, White, 2.4Ghz, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Oct 4, 2010 1:20 PM

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Answer 1

Niel

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Level 10

745,337 points

Oct 4, 2010 1:25 PM in response to Womanhattan

Documents saved as RTF are not plain text; this format is basically a fallback for word processor compatibility. Reopen them in AppleWorks, TextEdit, or another application which can read RTF and change them to the desired format.

(54149)

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Answer 2

Womanhattan Author

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Oct 4, 2010 2:02 PM in response to Niel

UNRESOLVED. Thanks but I am unable to open document with Appleworks and when I open with TextEdit, I am unable to save as plain text or as Appleworks; I try to "save as" and am only given "plain text encoding" options such as unicode, western, Japanese, etc.

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Answer 3

Niel

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Oct 4, 2010 2:08 PM in response to Womanhattan

Leave the encoding option as is and save the files from TextEdit. It can't create AppleWorks documents.

(54151)

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Answer 4

Womanhattan Author

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15 points

Oct 4, 2010 2:14 PM in response to Niel

Thanks so much for your well-intentioned advice but it did not resolve my issue.
I have reposted so someone else with a new perspective can offer help, so let's leave that post for someone else to attempt to address, please. You are very kind to take the time to answer, but I am still left with an unusable document that has all that formatting.

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Answer 5

Oct 5, 2010 10:02 AM in response to Womanhattan

You're probably left with doing it manually. How tiresome and cumbersome that turns out to be will depend on how artful you are with the Search & Replace functions, among others.

BTW, if this (as it turns out) duplicate advice fails to resolve your issue, then please do NOT open yet another thread on the same question.

Message was edited by: Michael Morgan1

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Answer 6

Hiroto

Level 5

7,487 points

Oct 6, 2010 5:45 AM in response to Womanhattan

Hello

If it is a valid RTF file, you should be able to open it in any application, including AppleWorks 6, which supports RTF file.

How are you opening the file in question? Double-clicking? Then try drag-dropping the file onto AppleWorks icon (in Dock, e.g.) As far as I can tell, AppleWorks 6 can open (actually import) RTF file, especially if the file has been exported from AppleWorks 6 itself.

---
If, by any chance, AW6 rejects it, try drag-dropping the file onto TextEdit.
Just make sure the following 2 things :

1) The file in question has the name extension as ".rtf"
2) In TextEdit > Preferences…, some option named "ignore rich text commands in RTF files" or the like is NOT CHECKED.

Good luck,
H

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Answer 7

Womanhattan Author

Level 1

15 points

Oct 6, 2010 12:15 PM in response to Hiroto

YOU ARE A GENIUS!!!! Changing this one setting now allows me to open those docs and they look exactly as I had hoped, without any gobbledy-gook, weird characters or whatever the formal term for this stuff may be! I will now post in other area where I've listed this issue and share that you provided this simple solution. I so appreciate your help!

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