Q: Appleworks 6 is sooooo slow

On which of your several platforms and/or OS that you have listed? If you've upgraded to Snow Leopard then you are trying to use a PPC version of AW6 on an Intel machine via Rosetta, most likely. Try upgrading AW6 to the Universal Binary version which will work better. Better yet replace it with something else like iWork, Office 2011, or LibreOffice.

Not sure but this may be it: AppleWorks X 6.2.9.

I highly recommend you export your AW's various documents to a portable format - RTF for word processor, .CSV or Tabbed text files for spreadsheet and database, not sure what for drawings. Then replace it with iWork. iWork should import some of AW's files.

Hi Paul,

AppleWorks was never rewritten as a Universal binary. The last update was version 6.2.9, which, like the earlier ones, is a PPC application.

The most likely culprit in your slowdown is AppleWorks's Recent Items folder. AW places an alias to every file you've ever saved (in AppleWorks) into this folder, and never clears out the less than 'recent' ones. At some point—wich appears to get progressively earlier with each updating of the OS version—everything slows down drastically, and sometimes comes to what appears to be a dead stop.

The cure is to open your Recent Events folder and drag all or most of the items in it to the Trash.

You'll find the folder on your hard drive at:

username (house icon) > Documents > AppleWorks User Data > Starting Points > Recent Items.

All items in that folder should be aliases, recognizable by the small black arrow at the bottom left corner of the icon. All may be Trashed without affecting the original files.

Regards,

Barry

Kappy wrote:

 

On which of your several platforms and/or OS that you have listed? If you've upgraded to Snow Leopard then you are trying to use a PPC version of AW6 on an Intel machine via Rosetta, most likely. Try upgrading AW6 to the Universal Binary version which will work better. Better yet replace it with something else like iWork, Office 2011, or LibreOffice.

There is no Universal Binary version. It was never written, never done. You must use Rosetta which, of course, disappears with Lion.

You could use an AppleScript like this one to automate removal of old aliases etc:

tell application "Finder"

          select ((every item of folder "Recent Items" of folder "Starting Points" of folder "AppleWorks User Data" of folder "Documents" of folder "USERNAME" of folder "Users" of startup disk) whose creation date comes before ((current date) - 60 * days))

  move selection to the trash

          select ((every item of folder "AutoSave" of folder "AppleWorks User Data" of folder "Documents" of folder "USERNAME" of folder "Users" of startup disk) whose creation date comes before ((current date) - 60 * days))

  move selection to the trash

end tell

Obviously change USERNAME to the name of your Home Folder; and you can set the number of days to whatever suits you. Save as an application somewhere convenient and select it in System Preferences>Accounts>your account>Login Items.