I have a large number of old AppleWorks docs and want to convert them to PDF before Lion comes. I wrote a script to find all AppleWork docs and to open the print dialog, but I found nothing to automate the process of printing to PDF. Do I really need to click the button for PDF printing, select the destination folder and to adapt the name of the PDF file manually? I have a lot of AppleWork docs!
Any idea?
Hi!
I don't know much about scripting and such but have you had a look at Automator on you Mac. I think it is for automate work flows.
Freeware CUPS-PDF is what you want for this sort of batch conversion:
https://bitbucket.org/codepoet/cups-pdf-for-mac-os-x/wiki/Home
After following the installation instructions, make an alias to the printer definition at ~yourusername/Library/Printers/CUPS-PDF and then put that alias on the Desktop or wherever it's convenient.
Next, drag and drop all AW docs you want to convert to the alias. Make a cup of coffee as it processes. By default, the new PDFs will be placed in the ~Users/Shared/CUPS-PDF/yourusername folder.
Incidentally, although AW won't run under Lion, I'd still expect to be able to open old AW docs with, for instance, Pages, when Lion arrives. Lion won't kill the docs even if it does kill off the AW application that first created them.
Hi mns579,
this is an interesting approach. The advantage would be, that I do not have to handle all those printer dialogs. The drawback is, that I have to move back every PDF file into the folder where the source file is located.
I decided to do it the other way round: My script searches all .cwk docs, opens them, let me do the printing dialog and copies the PDF result back to the folder where the source was in.
Regarding Pages there is a problem: Pages does open Appleworks documents only that are pure text documents. As soon as graphics is inside it cannot open the Appleworks doc. Lion will kill the docs!
I didn't know about the text-only limitation of importing AW into Pages. I never used AW for anything but text.
I can understand the up- and downsides to either conversion approach. Let's face it, moving to Lion is going to be a little bumpy.
TomRadfahrer wrote:
Regarding Pages there is a problem: Pages does open Appleworks documents only that are pure text documents. As soon as graphics is inside it cannot open the Appleworks doc. Lion will kill the docs!
That is not true! Pages opens AW documents with graphics. It has to be a word processing document though and saved in AW version 6. If they are saved in earlier versions Pages can't open them.
Draw and probably pict documents open in the Eazy Draw application. Spread sheets in Numbers and presentations in Key note
TomRadfahrer wrote:
Hi mns579,
this (using drag and drop with the freeware CUPS-PDF application) is an interesting approach. The advantage would be, that I do not have to handle all those printer dialogs. The drawback is, that I have to move back every PDF file into the folder where the source file is located.
So do them in folder by folder batches.
Open a Finder window, navigate to and open the destination folder used by CUPS-PDF.
Open a second Finder window, navigate to the folder containing AW files to be converted.
Select all the files to be converted, drag to the CUPS-PDF application icon, drop.
When the converted files appear in the destination folder, select them and drag to the (open) folder whence they came.
Repeat for the next folder.
Regards,
Barry
Maybe there is an additional problem if the docs would have been saved with an older version of AppleWorks (e.g. ClarisWorks). But even with docs saved with the "newest" version of AppleWorks the problem still exists and Pages cannot open many docs.
AppleWorks has three different document types, which are text, graphics and spreadsheet. Pages can open text with embedded graphics, but it cannot open graphics with embedded text. So it depends on your use pattern of AppleWorks a long time ago. Very often I created a blank graphics and added text boxes and graphical elements. These docs cannot be open with Pages, so don't rely on Pages in Lion.
I just learned that we have time until July to solve the problem. My personal solution is to convert the old docs to PDF and install Lion after that. For new docs I will use Pages, of course.
AW has 6 different document types.All mentioned above. Graphic in a word processing document will open in Pages. Graphic in a draw document wont. The problem you have is that you can't see which AW document you have not´r which AW version they are in. I think it is wise of you to convert them to pdf's.
Yes, I remember. Six, not three. Sorry. There was a data base and all of this stuff.
The link is very interesting. It is a pitty that AppleWorks has not been continued. I started 1985 with MacWrite and later on I used MacDraw. I am missing them both.
"My script searches all .cwk docs, opens them, let me do the printing dialog and copies the PDF result back to the folder where the source was in."
Gosh, that is exactly what I want to do with Clarisworks 2 files going all the way to Appleworks 5 or wherever it was that Pages took over.
Please please someone MUST be clever enough to make an automator script to allow this, so that the many hundreds of CWK files I have can at least be archived digitally and not lost to posterity!!!
I will pay good money for such a script if it works. Then I can move the Macpro and Macbook Pro to Lion when I want to without losing documents. Contact me if you have an answer gjltd@mac.com
Gareth Johnson
Scripting AppleWorks to print to PDF?
