Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Apple Works to Pages HELP

I have recently bought and installed 'Lion' and now cannot open any of my saved files written on apple Works. Is there a way that I can open and save all my files.

MacBook (13-inch Late 2007), Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Sep 12, 2012 11:19 AM

Reply
15 replies

Sep 12, 2012 12:18 PM in response to Alfetta

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.


The third-party application, EazyDraw (the expensive version), can open AppleWorks draw documents. If you still have access to AppleWorks you can copy the contents of draw documents, paste them into an AppleWorks word processing document in object mode (click the arrow in the tool panel), save the WP document & then open it in Pages. You can copy & paste from AppleWorks to Pages but you would have to do it object by object or it will be one big uneditable object.


There is nothing other than AppleWorks that can open paint or database documents. Database data can be copied & pasted into an AppleWorks spreadsheet, saved & opened in Numbers or saved as ASCII/plain text & opened in most any spreadsheet, database or word processing program. Paint documents can be saved as one of many different formats to be opened in most image editing programs. I recommend using PICT for best results.


User uploaded file

Nov 22, 2014 10:36 AM in response to Peggy

This is a late reply, but my dad just hit the same problem. He upgraded to Mac OS X Mavericks, and now his old ClarisWorks and AppleWorks programs no longer open in Pages. That seems like a terrible blunder by Apple to drop support for reading files generated by their own program. But there are a couple of workarounds. One is to get an older version of Pages that still reads those files, but you're living on borrowed time there.


Another is to use the free software "Libre Office", which can read AppleWorks files and save them in other formats, such as Microsoft Word ".docx" format, which can be opened by Pages and also by MS Word. Conveneniently, Libre Office even lets you call it from the command line to convert individual files.


So, being a Computer Scientist, I wrote a script to find all of the .cwk files in a directory (and its subdirectories), back them up to a backup directory ("cwkBackup"), and convert them all to MS Word ".docx" files. For this to work, you need to do this:


1) Download and install the free LibreOffice software (http://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-fresh/)

2) Download the script "cwk2docx.sh" (http://axon.cs.byu.edu/~randy/cwk2docx.sh), and put it in your home directory.

3) Open the Terminal application from Applications/Utilities/Terminal.

4) To see what Appleworks (.cwk) files you have, type "sh cwk2docx.sh -list ." (including the period, meaning "this directory"). Most likely, you only have .cwk files that you want to convert inside your "Documents" folder. But this will let you see if there are any hidden somewhere else that you want to convert, too.

5) For each directory that contains Appleworks files that you want to convert, to this:


sh cwk2docx.sh -process DirectoryName


For example, you will most likely run


sh cwk2docx.sh -process Documents


This will convert all of the .cwk files to .docx files, and back the .cwk files up to the directory "cwkBackups". If for some reason you think this was all a bad idea and want to restore the .cwk files back where they were, you can do "sh cwk2docx.sh -restore" and it will move those files back to where they originally were.


This saved my Dad's bacon, and hopefully will help others as well.

Nov 22, 2014 12:38 PM in response to randywilson99

It would appear that ClarisWorks/AppleWorks word processing and spreadsheet documents all have the .cwk file extension. Unfortunately, the UNIX file command only sees these documents as data on Mavericks. Older versions of OS X muttered something more detailed about these document types due to a different magic file entry. Attempting to convert a spreadsheet into a Word document may not proceed as planned.


The following command will find all ClarisWorks/AppleWorks documents in the specified folder hierarchy, and return the full POSIX path to the individual documents. This could be handy in a do while read loop.


while read acwk
do
# processing via LibreOffice
done < <(mdfind -onlyin ~/Documents 'kMDItemContentType == "dyn.ah62d4rv4ge80g75p"')

Nov 23, 2014 12:49 AM in response to VikingOSX

Hello,

VikingOSX wrote:


...


The following command will find all ClarisWorks/AppleWorks documents in the specified folder hierarchy, and return the full POSIX path to the individual documents. This could be handy in a do while read loop.


  1. while read acwk
  2. do
  3. # processing via LibreOffice
  4. done < <(mdfind -onlyin ~/Documents 'kMDItemContentType == "dyn.ah62d4rv4ge80g75p"')

I am not sure that this can be used to find all files, i.e. I have also in my test base some AppleWorks files with kMDItemContentType="com.apple.appleworks.document" ( which can be word processing, spreadsheet, database, ... )


Concerning making such script, it is also possible to take inspiration :

- either of the Yvan Koenig's AppleScript https://app.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k/1/1005707281 (see http://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=38406 ) ; at least to determine the document type...

- or of mwawOSX ( in http://sourceforge.net/projects/libmwaw/files/ ) which is an AppleScript which calls directly a compiled version of the filter used by LibreOffice...

Nov 23, 2014 5:33 AM in response to fosnola

Hi L.


I have 64 .cwk files in a folder. Some are spreadsheets, drawings, and word processing documents. Using the kMDItemContentType in my previous example, it finds all of these files. Using 'kMDItemKind == "AppleWorks*"c' also works correctly. Your com.apple.appleworks.document example for kMDItemContentType, or even kMDItemContentTypeTree does not find any of my AppleWorks documents on Mavericks 10.9.5 or Yosemite 10.10.1.


Yes, there is additional knowledge to be gleaned from the references and source code that you mention.

Nov 24, 2014 12:26 AM in response to VikingOSX

Hello,

I obtain with my bigger base of test files :

> for i in */* ; do mdls -name kMDItemContentType "$i" ; done |sort -u

kMDItemContentType = "com.apple.appleworks.document"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d46dzqm0gw23ssz1gw8brqz6gn25zsvu0e5dfhk2x4pphga5w8sm0"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d46dzqm0gw23ssz1gw8brqz6gn25zsvu0e5dfhk2x4qa"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d46dzqm0gw23ssz1gw8brqz6gn25zsvu0e5dfhk3d4641kvba"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d46dzqm0gw23ssz1gw8brqz6gn25zsvu0e5dfhk3d4641nrmu"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d46dzqm0gw23ssz1gw8brqz6gn25zsvu0e5dfhk3d4u41k7ma"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d46dzqm0gw23ssz1gw8brqz6gn25zsvu0e5dfhk3d4u41kvba"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d46dzqm0gw23ssz1gw8brqz6gn25zsvu0e5dfhk3d4u41nbna"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d4rv4ge80g73y"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d4rv4ge80g73yfzxxarmthe5a"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d4rv4ge80g75p"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d4rv4ge8xa"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d4rv4ge8xa1k"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d4rv4ge8xaqper7vw433ugu1xwru"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d4rv4gk81gz4xnq"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d4rv4gk8ygz41na"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d4rv4gk8ygz4ekk"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d4rv4gk8ygz4hnk"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d4rv4gk8ygz4unu"

kMDItemContentType = "dyn.ah62d4rv4gk8ygz4xnq"


and


> for i in */* ; do mdls -name kMDItemKind "$i" ; done |sort -u

kMDItemKind = "AppleWorks Document"

kMDItemKind = "AppleWorks"

kMDItemKind = "Document AppleWorks"

kMDItemKind = "Document HTML"

kMDItemKind = "Document"

kMDItemKind = "Fichier exécutable Unix"

( not anormal as I found some file on the web and there were retrieved with a bad extension html, ... )

Oct 22, 2015 5:48 AM in response to Peggy

Not sure what anyone is talking about. I recently updated my Mac Laptop to Lion. Downloaded an updated to AppleWorks (6.2.9, I believe. upon opening, stated “z-appleworksupdated.legacy image should be converted”. Have most of my label files on AppleWorks. Have loved Apple/Macs as they’ve always been ‘keep it simple stupid’ type of access. Now it appears going into pc type results. Isn’t there a simple way to get a new Apple Works application and/or update for Lion? Pages doesn’t even show ‘label’ template, nor does other iWork’s. Thanks! AppleWorks should never have been replaced, in my opinion.

Oct 22, 2015 2:53 PM in response to IMAC LADY

AppleWorks does not run on Lion or later - there is no way to get it to run directly. Lion does not recognize the document files, and so does not know how to display them.


  • Word Processing documents can be opened directly in Pages 4 (AppleWorks 6 only) but this is no longer available from Apple - the new Pages 5 (Yosemite required) does not open AppleWorks documents. (The older version is contained in the iWork '09 box set which may still be available from Amazon and other independent retailers.) Panergy Software's docXConverter v3.3 ($19.95) can convert Appleworks 5 and 6 Word Processing documents to RTF (though it has been reported that it can only handle documents which contain only text, not those which include images or frames). The latest version of the free LibreOffice (Mountain Lion required) has announced that it can open AppleWorks 6 Word Processing documents and an ability to open ClarisWorks documents has been reported: it does appear to be able to handle at least some embedded images.
  • 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). LibreOffice will open simple Draw documents but I found it very unreliable with complex ones.
  • Spreadsheets can be opened directly only in the older versions of Numbers - the new version for Yosemite will not do this. The old version is no longer available from Apple. (Again, the older version is contained in the iWork '09 box set which may still be available from Amazon and other independent retailers.)
  • Presentations can be opened directly only in the older versions Keynote; again, the new version for Yosemite will not do this. The old version is no longer available from Apple. (The older version is contained in the iWork '09 box set which may still be available from Amazon and other independent retailers.)
  • LibreOffice will open at least some Databases in spreadsheet format, though without any formating or calculations.

(LibreOffice is now available in the Mac App Store

in the Applications folder.)


If you have upgraded to Lion or above and have AppleWorks documents you cannot open, then you should be able to install Snow Leopard on an external hard disk and start from that (provided that the Mac did not come with anything higher than Snow Leopard originally installed); and success has been reported in running Snow Leopard Server under emulation in Parallels - the method is described here: Snow Leopard Server is (as far as I know) still available in the Apple Store (by telephone) at a reduced price and is preferable to using ordinary Snow Leopard which is quite tricky. I haven't tried this myself: use at your own discretion. You can then run AppleWorks as an emergency measure.

My article at http://wilmut.uk/aw looks at the problem of Abandoning Appleworks in detail.

Oct 23, 2015 6:35 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Thank you for a lot of clarity! Sincerely appreciate. Will try LibreOffice though doubt it will help. Within the “label” section of AppleWorks was able to store images to use on the ‘layout’ page. I will also access your site to gain more info. Have always considered my ability to help others with Apple/Mac issues as it was simpler; however, not a computer geek. Again, thanks!

Jan 21, 2016 6:44 PM in response to Alfetta

I Had the same problem with my AppleWorks files which were three books I have written. I have been a Mac addict since 1987 and was very discouraged when they dropped AppleWorks. I did not give up went and bought a MacBook Pro and an ipad2 to see how my books looked and worked on there. Now I was ready to learn epublishing. I had spent 17 years as a magazine publisher so layout paste is my thing. I loaded my AW files into MacBook Pro because iPages could convert my files. One book a children's picture book of 24 pages was carefully laid out using my own photos as illustrations. It took me five years to write and fine tune my manuscript while living with the house rabbit the book is app obout:-)

what a nightmare. IPages took my pages and changed the fonts and threw all the photos and text all over the place. Pages wants text and photos in little boxes .and it is a good thing I kept copies of everything because it was ruined. There Is no way I am copying all that into iPages and putting boxes around it. I loved the freedom AppleWorks allows.

my solution was to contact my local Apple dealer, I live in a small town so it is a small business here and asked if he had any trade inold power macs lying around. Yes he did and he sold me a lovely white MacBook G4.

i Can write and layout my stuff as long as this old Mac lives. It is 9 years old and all my Macs live 11-12. So fingers crossed.

I am very disappointed that Apple has changed into an Internet money hungry machine and leaves its creative supporters behind in the dust. I cannot convert to ePub and that is why I got the maCbook pro but I can self publish online if I wish . Yes one has to pay but the online publisher will do the ePub stuff and put books into Amazon and Apple books and I can continue what I love doing.

sheila

Jan 21, 2016 8:47 PM in response to ziggylepoof

As Roger noted, Appleworks running in Snow Leopard Server installed into Parallels for use in El Capitan:


User uploaded file

[click on image to enlarge]


Snow Leopard Server is available for $20 from the Apple Store by telephone only: 1.800.MYAPPLE (1.800.692.7753) - Apple Part Number: MC588Z/A


Installing Snow Leopard Server into Parallels for DUMMIES:


http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/installing-snow-leopard-and-rosetta-into-par allels-7-in-lion.1365439/page-23#post-17285039

Jan 21, 2016 11:46 PM in response to ziggylepoof

I have the previous version of Pages so it's possible that there is something different about the current one. However, the version I have provides two different sorts of document - word processing and layout. The former will continue text on from one page to the next, wrapping it within the margins provided, and then you can add images either inline or as floating objects which the text flows round. The layout format requires text to be in boxes for more control over layout, but you have to specifically set up continuing from one box to another to get to the next page. It sounds as if you are using the layout format and may be better off with the word processing format.


There are other programs - I now use Nisus Writer Pro which provides similar word processing facilities (though there are a number of differences in the execution) - I find it a more flexible and useful program. There is also Swift Publisher 2 which is a layout program, again requiring text to be in boxes but providing very good control over the page appearance. it's question of which way you want to work. Appleworks basically provided a word processing module similar to the WP in Pages and Nisus Writer Pro so the WP format may be more suitable for what you want.

Apple Works to Pages HELP

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.