Batch-converting AppleWorks to iWorks docs ahead of Lion

Question

Level 1

59 points

Batch-converting AppleWorks to iWorks docs ahead of Lion

Is there a way to batch-convert all of my AppleWorks docs to Pages or Numbers docs? I have a daunting task ahead of me to convert my old docs to iWorks if I intend to use Lion and maintain easy access to my old documents.

In the past, I have set all my AppleWorks docs to automatically open as Pages, but the password-protected ones don't, and then I have to change that preference, open the doc in AW, eliminate the Password, change the "Open with" preference again, and then save it with a Password in iWorks.

MacPro, iMac, MBPro 2.66 Intel Core i7, MackBook 2 G2, various G5's, Mac OS X (10.6.6), 1 TB Time Capsule (early 2009) & Airport Express

Posted on Jul 6, 2011 7:00 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Peggy

Level 8

41,601 points

Jul 6, 2011 3:36 PM in response to Glen Grayson

You will need to remove the passwords from the AppleWorks documents & then give them new passwords once you have them in one of the iWork (no 's') app formats.

Yvan Koenig has written a number of AppleScripts that can do batch conversions of many types of files into or out of the iWork apps. You can find them on his iDisk in For_iWork or Scripts for AppleWorks. Even though my French is extremely limited, I can usually figure out which scripts do what.

Keep in mind that the iWork applications - Keynote, Pages & Numbers - can only open AppleWorks 6 presentation, word processing & spreadsheet documents, respectively. They will not open any other type of AppleWorks 6 files or any AppleWorks 5 or any version of ClarisWorks files. Yvan has a script that can convert AppleWorks draw documents to Pages word processing documents.

Reply

Answer 2

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,807 points

Jul 8, 2011 6:56 AM in response to Peggy

Hello

I'm puzzled.

I wrote several scripts for AppleWorks.

Some of them are using GUI scripting to fit gaps in the list of drivable tasks.

Given that, I assumed that it would be quite easy to write a script "typing" a password in the dedicated dialog when a doc is protected.

Alas, I was wrong. When such dialog is open, every attempt to trigger the GUIScripting enter the system in a 'frozen' status.

To exit, we must wait the two minutes required by AppleScript to decide that the task is too long and issue an error message or we must trigger Force Quit.

So, I apologizes but I can't help to automate the transfer of protected documents on machines using Intel processors.

If I have free time, I will try to do the trick on my old G4.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 8 juillet 2011 15:56:34

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 4 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8

Please : Search for questions similar to your own before submitting them to the community

To be the AW6 successor, iWork MUST integrate a TRUE DB, not a list organizer !

Reply

Answer 3

Feb 29, 2012 9:49 AM in response to Glen Grayson

Hello. Did you ever find a batch converter ? How did you automatically get your AW docs to open in Pages ? I have the same issue. Have been using AW since it was Claris in 1987. What a pain.

Reply

Answer 4

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,807 points

Feb 29, 2012 10:11 AM in response to D G Whitton

(1) The fact that Lion will drop Rosetta was public for more than one year.

You had all that time to convert your files.

(2) If your documents were saved in a format older than AW6 one, you must convert them into AW6 ones on a system older than Lion.

(3) I posted scripts able to batch convert WP and SS from AW6 in Pages or Numbers.

I posted an other set able to batch convert older documents and Draw ones but they require AW6 so require a system older than Lion.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 29 février 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.3

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

Reply

Answer 5

Glen Grayson Author

Level 1

59 points

Feb 29, 2012 10:26 AM in response to D G Whitton

I have been using ClarisWorks since 1989. And in many respects, I liked AppleWorks 4 the best out of all the versions, including Pages.

Anyhow, you need to click on any AW doc in the Finder, and Get Info. From there, you will select Open with: Pages, and then click the Change All button below that.

Then, anytime you open an AW doc, it will open in Pages or Numbers, depending on whether it is a WP or SS document.

In spreadsheets, all of the results will appear in the cells, but formulas will be lost in Numbers.

If you password protected an AW doc, it will not open in Pages or Numbers until you turno off password protection.

One more thing- for the AW documents that are older than AW version 6, you will get an "Import Error- the document was created with an unsupported version of AppleWorks." You will have to open that in AW first, save it as an AW 6.x version, and then you can open it in Pages or Numbers.

I have decided that the batch-converting option looks way too complicated, so I am using this inconvenience as an opportunity to clean up my old files. Each time I go to a folder that has old AW docs, I spend a few moments converting them, and then I assign a color to the folder, so that I know it has been cleaned up. Things that I truly will never need again I am tossing.

I manage an office full of macs (ten), so we will likely keep one old Mac on Leopard off to the side, so that if we run into a stray document that wasn't converted (particulary archived files), we will be able to bring it up to date and the move it back over to a Lion mac.

Reply

Answer 6

Ferg22

Level 1

4 points

Mar 2, 2012 5:23 AM in response to D G Whitton

Hi,

I too have been using AW/CW for well over 15years. It really is still the best package of its kind I have come across. However it has been abandoned by Apple. At first there was zero then eventually Pages had a claimed ability to read AW documents. I was so desperate to retain access to every letter I have written over the years, that I eventually bought a copy of Pages.

However it was a total waste of money and I deleted it. I found that Pages ability to open AW/CW documents stretched to only the most trivial of documents, basically if you stuck to plain text you were OK. It failed to usefully convert any company letter or invoice I had ever written.

Today, Feb 2012, I tired Pages 09 and found that it does usefully convert most of my files. I am gradually getting resigned to converting 1000's of docs. However I still have a very bad taste in my mouth about this whole thing.

The key lesson going forward is what format are you going to use for future letters and spreadsheets. It could be one of the most important decisions you make. How many years would you like to be able to read/print those documents you are writing today. Choose carefully. For my part if an Apple tool is not using a standard open format to store anything I value, I wont use it.

Reply

Answer 7

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,807 points

Mar 2, 2012 5:50 AM in response to Glen Grayson

Glen Grayson wrote:

I have been using ClarisWorks since 1989. And in many respects, I liked AppleWorks 4 the best out of all the versions, including Pages.

Anyhow, you need to click on any AW doc in the Finder, and Get Info. From there, you will select Open with: Pages, and then click the Change All button below that.

Then, anytime you open an AW doc, it will open in Pages or Numbers, depending on whether it is a WP or SS document.

In spreadsheets, all of the results will appear in the cells, but formulas will be lost in Numbers.

It depends.

I imported numerous documents.

Most of the formulas were correctly translated.

A few weren't because they used a function which isn't available in Numbers.

But, as we may display the original formula, it's often easy to build an alternate valid one.

At this time all my AW spreadsheets are replaced by Numbers ones.

To be honest, I must add that as I do my best to be a serious user, I didn't wait August 2011 to make the conversion. As the Rosetta dropping was public since at leat the beginning of 2011, I converted very old documents to AW6 to be able to convert them with Pages or Numbers.

Pages was advertized to be able to import Word Processor documents. I guess that your company letter/invoice were not WP but Draw documents.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 2 mars 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.3

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

Reply

Answer 8

Glen Grayson Author

Level 1

59 points

Mar 2, 2012 6:01 AM in response to KOENIG Yvan

In all the years, I have only done a handful of Draw documents. The majority were WP, and maybe 20% were spreadsheets. I think the problem with formulas in AW was that they were formatted differently than in Numbers. Now maybe it was possible to format them in AW the way we have to in Numbers, but I wasn't doing it.

I think that in Numbers, formulas get formattted the same way they do in Excel, whereas in AW, there were easier ways of doing them, and that is what I was used to.

Fortunately for me, it is not that important that the formulas come through in Numbers- my need to see old spreadsheets is jsut to see the results.

Another complication that I discovered as a slog through my old CW files, is that if the file name is too long, it will not save in AW. It was frustrating me until I realized this, and after shortening the names, they are able to be saved to AW, so that I can reopen them in Pages.

It is all very therapeutic- tossing out things I don't need, and organizing things. Not bad, actually.

I have been using iWorks exclusively since the latest version, when they finally had a viable spreadsheet capability, and I am pretty happy with it.

I think I have two or three weeks of transferring files, and I can then make the leap to Lion.

Reply

Answer 9

sideway

Level 1

0 points

Oct 31, 2013 2:38 AM in response to KOENIG Yvan

Dear Yvan,

I'm struggling with the same problem since many years, or rather, I've left it unresolved since I haven't found a workable option (to handle this manually without a scripts is just too time consuming). But you seem to have produced some scripts! I've got some 10 000 AW- and CW-files which are almost all text-documents still uncoverted, I'm a journalist specialised in architecture and design and need access to them frequently. I got a couple a questions I'd appreciate if you could answer:

1. is it really a good idea to convert to Pages, wouldn't rtf or text be better since they seem to be unaffected by updated in OS X and similar? If so, how to rewrite your scripts?

2. How do I get access to your script/scripts? I tried follow the link to your box.com but can't download them, I can just see the list of the folders, is there some log-in issue there? (and I don't know which files on the list are appropriate).

I'd be really thankful for an answer!

Best,

Leo

Reply

Answer 10

Peggy

Level 8

41,601 points

Oct 31, 2013 4:01 PM in response to sideway

You have revived a very old thread. Yvan no longer posts here (for reasons that aren't relevant). His Box.com account is often out of bandwidth but is currently working. Make sure the line of one of the folders is highlighted or just click & hover over the down-facing triangle which you can then click for more options. You can choose to download the folder or open it. You could also just click on the folder to open it.