Q: AppleWorks and Lion

While I understand what many of you are saying about "moving on" and "turning the page," I completely disagree about Appleworks being an "inferior" program. For me, it's FAR superior to Pages. Just the word processing application alone is far better (for me) to use. In fact, I really can't stand Pages. I know it inside out, but find it to be far less user friendly. Appleworks was a much better program, and I'll continue to use it until I am totally unable to do so.

chipperz wrote:

 

.....  As an alternative, I use Open Office which is available for free from openoffice.org.  It has a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation program and a database.  Unfortunately you cannot just import ApplrWork documents into Open Office.  The word processing documents can be easily imported, and the spreadsheet can be imported as well.  However. the database documents cannot be imported and must be remade.

http://www.filemaker.com/products/bento/appleworks.html

Bento v4 ( "Filemaker" for personal use ) is Lion compatible ( use it my own ) and can import Appleworks Databases ( so the entry in their support document reads ) , follow the link they explain how to do it. This company knows how to deal with AW, because Filemaker is connected to former Claris Inc ( remember Appleworks was originally Clarisworks ) and Filemaker Inc itself is owned  100% by Apple. - So it is not too far reached to say it is the missing part of iwork, only running under a different brandname ..

So the best way to port over AW to the Lion Age would be iwork09 ( is Lion compatible with latest updates, even supports versioning and autosave , fullscreen )  for spreadseets and documents, presentations plus Bento4 for the database part, then nothing stands in the way between your old data and the newest OS.

Sjazbec wrote:

 

plus Bento4 for the database part, then nothing stands in the way between your old data and the newest OS.

Well, I do not like Bento. It doesn't do the easy things I can do in AW. It doesn't show several posts at the same time for one thing. It shows one post at the time.

And it doesn't directly import AW database. You have to first save it as ASCII text. You lose all formatting.

Read more here http://www.wilmut.webspace.virginmedia.com/notes/aw/page5.html

Older AppleWorks text-documents can be converted with OpenOffice!

Which versions of AW more specifically?

While what you say is true that you must do some work to get your data migrated from AW to Bento, I think the end result is far and away better then anything AW was capable of doing.

One feature of Bento that has helped me no end was a database I created for a club. In the past under AW, if anyone asked me a question, I would always have to reply that I will get back to you later with that. Now with Bento since I can access the database on my iPhone, I whip out my iPhone and give them the answer they need. That feature along was worth the small amount of work it took me to migrate over to Bento.

Allan

I don't have an iPhone or iPad, so this is pretty meaningless to me, Allan.

I use my AppleWorks Database files in List View for the most part. I'm not sure Bento has an equivalent?

So few people use AppleWorks the way I do. I use it almost as much for Draw and Paint as I do for Word Processing.

There is just nothing out there that does for me what AppleWorks does. It would take four or five different applications, some with steep learning curves, and all with major fiddling around to replace AppleWorks.

What I'm hoping is that before my Snow Leopard becomes obsolete, some all-inclusive software will come along which will be a true AppleWorks replacement. At that point, I would be able to let go of AppleWorks as long as the new software would convert all AppleWorks documents (and, just maybe, even if it wouldn't).

You're not alone, Ronda.  I use Appleworks for its Draw program, as well as Database, and am just sick that there's no easy replacement.  I have reluctantly invested in EazyDraw to reclaim my AW Draw docs (they open in the 4.0 version), but I haven't conquered 4.1 version for creating new ones (it looks simple, but I can't figure out how to have my resized graphic copy & paste at 300 dpi and still be the size I thought I made it!), so I'm still using my old computer with AW functioning on it for now.  I suppose I'll go to Bento4 just so I can do my Christmas card mailing lables, but it sure seems like there ought to be an easier answer.

How come technology is making my life more difficult?  I'm getting to old for this, and aging fast.

Text documents of AW 6 can be opened with Pages, version AW 5 with OpenOffice. But it's only possible to convert the text, no formattings.

Ronda and Jane, I feel your pain. I've never used the database (FileMaker instead), and I now use TextEdit and Word (WP), occasionally Excel (SS), and Photoshop (PT).

But Apple have NEVER replaced the vector graphics software. Never. I only this morning created an AW Drawing for social services which took me 5 or 10 minutes. As for substitutes, EasyDraw doesn't work in Leopard, let alone on a PPC Mac. For me and my G5 there simply is no alternative to the Drawing program that is 1) available and 2) affordable.

EazyDraw 4.0 version DOES work in Leopard using a PPC Mac.  Just go to their site & download this older version. Trust me; I'm a doctor. (I always wanted to say that!)

You can copy AppleWorks Draw documents into Preview and save in whatever format you like. Of course, this is a static drawing then, but the entirety can be resized in Preview. (Resizing works in Leopard or Snow Leopard; I haven't checked out Tiger.) This also works with Paint objects in Leopard, but Snow Leopard takes that ability away, and you have to copy a Paint document to a Draw document and then re-copy it to get it to Preview.

Of course, you can save as a variety of formats directly from AppleWorks, or Print > Save as PDF to get a PDF of it.

I just closed a Database document in AppleWorks, and AppleWorks crashed.

In my experience, it seems to me that each version of the OS has been shakier with AppleWorks than the one before, so I was prepared for it to be broken, but that doesn't mean I like it. I will be staying with Snow Leopard as long as I possibly can.

Thanks Jane - but as I'm using Leopard on a G5 iMac I don't need Eazydraw (it was a bit of a pointless complaint on my part!) - I can still use AW Draw for the few times I need it.

When I finally update to an Intel Mac I intend to buy a copy of Snow Leopard so I can run AW in it - and all my Rosetta apps - in a Parallels window.

There is every likelihood that any new Mac you might buy will not be capable of running Snow Leopard.

If you are going to remain at SL, you will probably have to buy old hardware that can run it.

Allan

Allan, that I find difficult to believe as Apple always support their current OS plus the previous one. Therefore SL won't be unsupported until 10.8 by which time I will either have bought a new machine running 10.7 or else will wait a short while and buy a 'few months old recon' machine.