How to import AppleWorks files into iWork?

AppleWorks 6 word documents can be opened in Pages

AppleWorks 6 spreadsheet documents can be opened in Numbers

Allan

• Word Processing documents can be opened directly in Pages (AppleWorks 6 only), though Panergy Software'sdocXConverter v3.2 ($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); and the latest version of the free LibreOffice has announced that it can open AppleWorks 6 Word Processing documents: 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). However Draw documents can be copied into WP documents and then opened in Pages - more details here.
• Spreadsheets can be opened directly only in Numbers.
• Presentations can be opened directly only in Keynote.
• Nothing will open Paint or Database documents.

If you have upgraded to Lion/Mountain Lion 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 under emulation in Parallels - the method is described here: it seems complex; however Snow Leopard Server is available in the Apple Store (by telephone) at a reduced price (at the time of writing) and this makes the process a lot easier. I haven't tried either method: use at your own discretion. You can then run AppleWorks as an emergency measure.

There is a detailed article on 'Abandoning AppleWorks' here:

http://rfwilmut.net/aw

Roger Wilmut1 wrote:

...and success has been reported in running Snow Leopard under emulation in Parallels - the method is described here: ... Snow Leopard Server is available in the Apple Store (by telephone [1-800-MY-APPLE]) at a reduced price (at the time of writing) ... You can then run AppleWorks as an emergency measure.

[click on image to enlarge]

I have old .cwk AppleWorks documents that I created using AppleWorks on our Windows computer. They won't open using Pages on my mac, but I found that I can open them using Nisus Writer Pro as a text file. The text is there (pretty much formatted) with only some junk in front of it and at the end that I have to delete. But it saved my files. I copied and pasted it into another word processor. To get it to open with another app control-click the file icon, and then select the program you want to open it with. As I said Nisus Writer Pro let me open it as a text file, but Pages would not. There may be other programs that do the same thing and would save you $$ by not buying Nisus Writer Pro.

Hi Kerby,

Those files should also open in Text Edit, supplied with your Mac. With word processing files, you will get the text, with the meta data and formatting codes above and below the bare text.

Text Edit will also open at least some of the other AppleWorks file types, but you'll have much more difficulty extracting useful information from those.

Also, try opening them with Libre Office. I haven't seen any reports specific to Windows produced AW files, but in theory, at least, these were cross-compatibe with the ones produced by the Mac version.

Regards,

Barry

Hello,

Also, try opening them with Libre Office. I haven't seen any reports specific to Windows produced AW files, but in theory, at least, these were cross-compatibe with the ones produced by the Mac version.

even if the two formats are very similar, I have seen some slight differences: in some structures, some numbers seemed to be stored in little endian instead of big endian.

I tried to check for such potential endian reversal and I suppose that LibreOffice will open most Windows word processings files "correctly", but I have very few files from Windows to test, so...