Appleworks in 10.8

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4180914

My comments in this thread may help:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3521984?start=0&tstart=0

Pages will open AppleWorks v6 Word Processing documents, but nothing will open Appleworks databases.

It's been suggested elsewhere that using an emulator to run Snow Leopard within Mountain Lion and running AppleWorks on that may be a solution. I don't know how practicable this is.

Pages opens word processing documents, not database documents.

Hi Jan,

I had the same problem and have half of the solution you need. Still searching for the rest!

This works for Word Process documents only and if the document isn't too, too old to be opened at all. (Pages will NOT recognize Drawing documents or any other subsets of AppleWorks):

1. Open the Appleworks file, then save and close. This somehow updates the file or ??. It's a necessary step.

2. THEN drag and drop onto the pages icon on your menu bar and it should open right up perfectly.

IF the file is too, too old and you get a message along those lines that it won't open, there's hope if you have an older computer (you only need to go back one or two versions!) and can open your file on that on that, then resave it, bring it back to your original computer to drag and drop onto the Pages icon. Word will usually/often open, but you may lose spacing configurations and fixing can be time consuming. Pages opens it perfectly.

I'm still looking for a solution to easily converting Drawing files! No luck yet

My OS 10.6.8 has AppleWorks 6 installed, but it barely works at all. Not sure if having AppleWorks installed is a necessary step to complete all of the above or not. (Copies are still available on amazon.com for a very reasonable price.)

I'm not super-techie, just depend on dumb logic to find some sometimes very cool solutions. Good luck! I hope this helps!

jrodfromak wrote:

I had the same problem and have half of the solution you need. Still searching for the rest!

This works for Word Process documents only and if the document isn't too, too old to be opened at all. (Pages will NOT recognize Drawing documents or any other subsets of AppleWorks):

1. Open the Appleworks file, then save and close. This somehow updates the file or ??. It's a necessary step.

Not in my experience. As long as the document is Word Processing and AW6, it can be opened directly in Pages. In any case, if you have Lion/Mountain Lion you can't run AW anyway.

I'm still looking for a solution to easily converting Drawing files!

There are two. Draw Documents can be opened directly only in EazyDraw (the more expensive version from their website, not the cheaper one from the Mac App Store, and you will need v4.0 'Retro' not the most recent version) or Intaglio (though this appears not to be able to handle very complex drawings). However it is possible to open Draw documents in Pages, but you have to be able to run AW as it involves copying them into a WP document - please see this page:

http://www.wilmut.webspace.virginmedia.com/notes/aw/page3.html

Nothing will open Database or Paint documents. Again, if you can run AW and export Database data as an ASCII file you can then open that in other database programs, but of course you lose all the formatting - please see this page:

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

Numbers will open AW spreadsheets.

My OS 10.6.8 has AppleWorks 6 installed, but it barely works at all.

It works perfectly well on Snow Leopard for me, so something else on your system may be getting in the way.

Some of my older AW processing programs that will won't open on Pages unless I to the open/close step. I think this brings them up to AW6 or somehow updates. I don't claim to know why, just that it works when I would have otherwise given up.

My Pages won't even acknowledge Drawing files. I can copy and paste, but get it all in a box that can't be deconstructed. I can, however save as a .pdf to at least conserve the document.

Is it worth it to reload AppleWorks6 on a 10.6.8? What could be getting in the way? Jan, from the original entry, seems to be having the same experience.

jrodfromak wrote:

Some of my older AW processing programs that will won't open on Pages unless I to the open/close step. I think this brings them up to AW6 or somehow updates.

That's what's happening. They are AW 5 documents, and when you open them in AW 6 it saves them as AW6 (you should see a notice to this effect, as once done you can't open them in AW5, not that you want to).

Pages won't open Draw documents: you have to copy them into a WP document first, following carefully the steps outlined in the page I linked to.

I can't say what might be causing your AW application not to run properly. I would suggest you start a new thread, specifically saying that AW is not running properly in Snow Leopard, since this thread is ahout something different.

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-2522