old appleworks files

It sounds as if you have AppleWorks 5 documents. Pages can open AppleWorks 6 Word Processing documents, but not AppleWorks 5, and the same is true of LibreOffice.

Panergy Software's docXConverter 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). This may well be your only option.

All this applies to Word Processing documents. Nothing will open AW Database documents.

If you have upgraded to Lion/Mountain Lion 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 install and run AppleWorks 6 as an emergency measure if you have the install disks for it - this will open v5 documents and save them as AW6 ones, which Pages can open.

Try opening them in TextEdit. You will get a lot of nonsens text but somwhere in the middle you'll find the "real" text.

Hello,

> It sounds as if you have AppleWorks 5 documents. Pages can open AppleWorks 6 Word

> Processing documents, but not AppleWorks 5, and the same is true of LibreOffice.

in fact, normally, LibreOffice 4.1 might be able to open all ClarisWorks and AppleWorks word processing documents. It also includes a lot of filters for many old mac formats: Microsoft Word (since v1 mac), MacWrite , WriteNow, …: some are good, some are not so good :-~

Yes, I didn't really intend to imply that LibreOffice was limited to AW6, though I don't know for certain and I don't have any AW5 files left to try it out.

Hello Roger,

I think that I have some files for each avalaible version, so I can test :-)

More precisely, the first byte of each file defines the internal file's version and I have files with internal version:

• 1: ClarisWorks 1,
• 2: ClarisWorks 2 or 3,
• 4: ClarisWorks 4,
• 5: ClarisWorks/AppleWorks 5,
• 6: AppleWorks 6

ie. I do not have any files with internal version 3, but I suspect that this number was skipped ( because my version of ClarisWorks 3 creates documents with internal number 2 and my version of ClarisWorks 4 creates documents with internal number 4 ).

I also found on the web some AppleWorks files created on Window, the conversion seems to work, but it is possible that some problems remain for such files....

This is interesting. Will you also test types of AW/CW that will open in LibreOffice? Pict, draw etc..

Hello fruhulda,

as I am one of the conceptors of libmwaw: the filter which is used by LibreOffice (http://sourceforge.net/p/libmwaw/wiki/Home/), I can answer.

Actually, in LibreOffice, this filter must accept <<converting>> all word processing, all drawing and all painting ClarisWorks/AppleWorks files. But the result of the conversion of a drawing document is often bad (not always but very often) and if you try to convert a paint document, the dimension of the main bitmap will be bad ( ie. you will have to scale it up by hand if you want to retrieve its real dimension) :-~

Normally, the conversion of a drawing/painting document will be a little better with the next version of libmwaw ( which I need to finish ) but I do not know when it will be integrated in LibreOffice...

Notes:

• mwawOSX( http://sourceforge.net/projects/libmwaw/files/ ) accepts also converting presentation AppleWorks document ; but the results are always bad. I have to recompile it in order to include the last improvements concerning the graphics' retrieving, I will probably do that next week.
• mwawCSVOSX( http://sourceforge.net/projects/libmwaw/files/ ) may be able to retrieve the main content of a spreedsheat or a database ClarisWorks/AppleWorks files and to output the result in a CSV file ; this is a new tool and I have very few documents to test it, so ...
• these two tools are a crude AppleScript interface to the libmwaw library, interface which can surely be improved a lot :-~

Wow, it is so nice the read all this. I have a few older spread sheets and database files I could mail to you if you like?

Ok, this will be nice and it will allow me to do more tests :-)

You can find my email on http://www.loria.fr/~alonso .

I have send you a bunch of documents. As I have SheepShaver I can simulate oldMacOs 9 environment and use CW2 and CW4.

Hello Fruhulda,

thank you for these files, I just send your the results of the conversion, so that you can see the problems which remain to be solved :-)

Note:

- I am currently using MiniVMac to similute CW v1-4 and I have a <<old>> mac with OX10.6 which can launch AppleWorks 6.

Hi!

The convertions of the Register/database to spreadsheet in LibreOffice is working fine, as are the CW spreadsheets.

I send you soome new Picture document from CW2 and CW4. I hope it helps.

Regards

Rose

I am trying to help my older brother with his old cwk files. He failed to heed the warnings from Apple before upgrading to the latest Mac OS X. I have installed LibreOffice 4.1 and wrote a macro that converts cwk text files to LO odt files. I also have all of his cwk spreadsheet files on a flash drive. I am trying to convert these on my sisters older Mac that has Appleworks 6. It opens the files and allows me to save them in Excel which i can later conver to LibreOffice .ods files. I would like to automate this conversion and have found a copy of Appleworks 5 which has a macro language that i think i can use. With VBA knowledge I was able to write something in LO Basic so i think i can do the same in AppleWorks 5's macro language.

What i am not sure of is whether i can have Appleworks 5 & 6 installed on my sister's older Mac at the same time. I am a PC windows guy so all of this is new to me. I am tyring to avoid AppleScript if I can. I am not even sure it would do what i need. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi rr,

You can have both AW 5 and AW 6 installed on the same machine, provded that machine will support both applications. AW5 requires Mac OS 9 or OS X, and the Classic environment with OS 9 running there. AW 6.2 came in a 'package' that contained versions of the application for both OS 9 and OS X. If memory serves, the OS 9 version supported macros. I don't recall having 'written' macros for either version (AW5 or AW6), but I do recall having 'regorded' several.

One thing I would avoid is having more than one version running at the same time.

Regards,

Barry

Hi Barry,

Thanks for the quick reply. First, I am not a professional programmer. I am generally referred to as a self-taught hobbyist. I have a lot of exerience with VBA for Office. Mostly Excel but some with Word, Access and Outlook. I am learning the Mac.

The Mac I will be running AW 5 & 6 on is running OS X 10.6.8. AW 6 is version 6.2.7. I am awaiting AW 5 so I have no information on it at the moment.

What i will start with is a list of file names complete with path to the flash drive containing the cwk files. The list is in a AW 5 spreadsheet. I know all the cwk files are spreadsheet types. I want to go down the list opening each cwk file and then saving it in a new format. As I said, I have done this with a couple of the files manually.

There are 84 of them.

I am debating doing the whole thing manually as opposed to my initial idea of writing (or recording) a macro to do the job. It took me a week to write a simple LO Basic macro to list in a spreadsheet (ods) all files in a starting folder including all subfolders recursively and then separating the text files from the spreadsheet ones. The recorder was no help in LO Basic. It was a real chore.

If the AW 5 recorder could get me the basic code to do the open and save around which i put the looping i thought it might be doable. As someone who is familiar with all this I would value your opinion. I am retired and have lots of time but.

Best regards,

Russ