I just downloaded mountain lion and old apps won't work. Now what?

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Office 2004 are PowerPC applications that are not supported in Lion or Mountain Lion. Upgrade to Office 2008 or 2011, or some other application that can handle Office documents.

Your version of Word is 9 years old, time to upgrade.

OpenOffice should work with your Office files, and it is free.

http://www.openoffice.org

bob.logan64 wrote:

Thank you for the suggestions. All I want to do is access what is there right now. I will find another method for use in the future. Basically I use "Word" very infrequently, and when I do I use it as a kind of note pad.

I'm a musician, and one reason I used it was for a bio or resume. Now it's stuck in there and I can't get to it. Otherwise I very rarely use things like that. Which was why it was such an old version.

I know this is not the proper forum for a rant, but I hate these upgrades and changes. I was two years with my snow leopard and was very happy with it. Now the scroll thing is different. Why? I have spent the whole day changing things and updating. Sorry, I'm getting way of track.

Is there a way I can get to my existing documents in microsoft word? I guess I will have to use Lanny's suggestion and upgrade the "Word" that I have.

Reinstall 10.6.8 from the backup you made before you upgraded to Mountain Lion.

Cheers

Pete

Here is a recent post I assembled for a similar question:

Unfortunately you got caught up in the minor miracle of Rosetta. Originally licensed by Apple when it migrated from the PowerPC CPU platform that it had used from the mid-1990's until the Intel CPU platform in 2006, Rosetta allowed Mac users to continue to use their library of PPC software transparently in emulation.

However, Apple's license to continue to use this technology expired with new releases of OS X commencing with Lion (and now Mountain Lion). While educational efforts have been made over the last 6 years, the fact is that Rosetta was SO successful that many users were caught unaware UNTIL they upgraded to Lion or Mountain Lion.

Workarounds:

1. If your Mac will support it, restore OS X Snow Leopard;

2. If your Mac will support it, partition your hard drive or add an external hard drive and install Snow Leopard into it and use the "dual-boot" method to choose between your PowerPC software or Lion/Mt. Lion;

3. Upgrade your software to Intel compatible versions if they are available, or find alternative software that will;

3. Install Snow Leopard (with Rosetta) into Parallels:

[click on images to enlarge]

Full Snow Leopard installation instructions here:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1365439

NOTE: STEP ONE of the instructions must currently be completed on a Snow Leopard or Lion Mac and the resulting modified Snow Leopard.cdr install file can then be moved over to your Mountain Lion Mac for completion of the remaining steps. A recent poster has offered a solution for Mountain Lion users that do not have access to Snow Leopard or Lion Macs.

NOTE 2: Computer games with complex, 3D or fast motion graphics make not work well or at all in virtualization.

bob.logan64 wrote:

Now the scroll thing is different. Why?

Bob...........

Try Text Edit (in your Applications folder) and see if it will open your Word files. Let us know...

I am actually surprised that Text Edit lost all of the formatting; try this:

Launch Text Edit, go into Preferences under the Text Edit menu and be sure that Rich Text is selected. Then close Preferences and quit Text Edit.

Now launch Text Edit again and open a formatted Word document again and let me know if there is a different result.

Others have reported that OpenOffice is a good replacement, too.

Office 2011 is the current version and is Lion/Mt. Lion compatible. Some people hate the new interface and choose to use Office 2008, which is also Lion/Mt. Lion compatible.

You did not express your reason for upgrading to Mt. Lion nor any specific features of Mt. Lion that you need on an on going basis. So, probably your best bet is to restore OS X Snow Leopard and be happy there. I have no experience with this procedure and others will have to give you instructions if you choose this course.

Yes: some of us express our creativity through the use of computers instead of keyboards... Sad, but true!

bob.logan64 wrote:

Here's how I back up my computer. I get lots of notepads and write down on paper, everthing that is in the computer, then save the stacks and stacks of paper in a metal file cabinet. That's a pretty good back up system. Takes a while though.

If that is your attitude to backing up your data and safeguarding against data loss, then may I ask why you would bother to own a computer in the first place? Not much anyone can really do for you that hasn't been mentioned, I'm afraid.

Good luck

Pete

bob.logan64 wrote:

And Peter, I hope you were kind of kidding, cuz I was.

Do you play a 335 or just use it as your avatar?

Play a Gretch White Falcon actually, also a locally made Noyce Shark. Sorry, I thought you may have been serious on the backup issue. My mother used to take photos of the screen as a backup system, and THEN put them into iPhoto for secure backup!!! lol

But if you do have a backup of your Snow Leopard system from before you updated, it may well pay to reinstall it from your backup and go back to where you started. Snow Leopard is still a great OSX and still one of the most stable that Apple have made.

Good luck

Cheers

Pete