What is Apple Works

AppleWorks is not free. It has been bundled with "consumer" Macs for quite a few years, but is not bundled with the new Intel iMacs, Mac minis & MacBooks. It is also sold separately. The closest comparison on the PC would be Microsoft Works, only better. ClarisWorks & AppleWorks (the name was changed in the middle of version 5) have been available for PCs, too. AppleWorks 6 for Windows is only available for qualifying educational users. Here is something I wrote up the last time someone asked.

AppleWorks is an integrated program consisting of 6 modules - word processing, spreadsheet, database, draw, paint & presentation - that interact almost seamlessly. You can insert frames of most of the other modules in WP, SS & DR documents. However, AppleWorks seems to be at the end of its developmental life. AppleWorks 6 was released in March, 2000, & the last update was in January, 2004.

At Macworld San Francisco in January, 2005, iWork ’05 was announced as "building the successor to AppleWorks." So far, iWork consists of two separate applications, Pages for word processing/page layout & Keynote for presentations. Limited spreadsheet functions in tables were added to both programs & Pages can mail merge from Address Book (only). The iWork apps are universal binaries & can take advantage of the "bells & whistles" of OS X. AppleWorks runs in OS X, but has not been coded to use most OS X features.

Hi Marc - I use both a PC and a new iMac for some website stuff and the big problem I had initially with the Mac was finding like software I had been using on the PC...

For HTML text editing, I think PAGE SPINNER, is a dynamite little app, from simple text editing to unlimited coding and all the little things that make editing pages easier... check it out, Good luck, Rick

iMac G5 iSight 20" - 30G iPOD in Slimming Black - Mac OS X (10.4.7) - HP Pav 15" WS and Toshiba Sat 17" WS LP's - Canon 20D & A620

Some versions of AppleWorks include a set of MacLinkPlus translators, which enable the import of spreadsheets from a few versions of Microsoft Excel. If your copy of AppleWorks doesn't include a translator for the version of Excel which created the document, you can either purchase MacLinkPlus, or use icExcel to open the file.

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I have a question related to the spreadsheet. If you
have a spreadsheet file, from excel made on a pc, is
it possible to open it on a mac in appleworks?

This isn't the answer to your question, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to mention it.

You could open the Excel spreadsheet on your Mac using NeoOffice. NeoOffice is a free clone of Microsoft Office. It will open the spreadsheet, edit it using the same sort of tools the author had, and save it back to an Excel format to send it to the author. AppleWorks will not perform these tasks near as well as NeoOffice does.

Note that I'm not advocating use of NeoOffice as your everyday office suite. Just using it for the things it does better than AppleWorks.

Cheers.

Dale

Hello

As far as I know, the responce is yes if the PC application is AppleWorks 6 for windows.


Sometimes I read that Word is able to read AW6 WP files. In fact, it read the raw contents of the file (exactly what TextEdit does on the mac) which means that every formatting is lost and that you get a lot of garbage.

To get this kind of result, it would be easier to save as ASCII text !!!

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE lundi 17 juillet 2006 20:25:43)

It is highly unlikely that the PC users will have AppleWorks 6 for Windows. You will be much better off by saving any files in a format Windows users can open. For all of these, choose "Save As..." from the File menu & change the "File Format" in the drop-down menu. You do need to add the appropriate file extension to the file name as Windows does not know what program to use without it and AppleWorks will not add it for you.

1. For pictures, JPEG (not JPEG 2000) is best. Add .jpg to the file name.

2. For word processing, most will use Word Windows 97, 2000, XP. Add .doc to the file name. You can also save as RTF (.rtf) or plain text (.txt).

3. For spreadsheets, save as Excel & add .xls to the file name.

You could also save any document as a PDF which can be viewed by Acrobat Reader. Essentially, you print the file to a PDF format. Choose "Print" from the File menu & click the button at the bottom of the dialog box that says "Save as PDF." You will get a regular save dialog box. This method does add the appropriate .pdf file extension, just make sure "Hide extension" is not checked. I have found, though, that many PC users don't have this installed on their computers.

Also, ka77, your question is not related to the original post in this thread or the subsequent replies. You're always more likely to get answers to your specific questions if you post a new topic rather than adding on to an existing thread.

Sometimes I read that Word is able to read AW6 WP
files. In fact, it read the raw contents of the file
(exactly what TextEdit does on the mac) which means
that every formatting is lost and that you get a lot
of garbage.

Microsoft Word for Mac opens AW6 WP documents perfectly. It comes with translators to do this. This is not what TextEdit does.

My understanding is that Microsoft licensed the AW 6 WP file format from Apple, which is why Word translates the documents so well. Note that MS Word for Mac can't save AW 6 WP documents.

Dale

Hello Dale

I assumes that you are right

but I assumed the same thing when I read these sentences:
Newer versions of Word for both the Mac & the PC (2001 for Mac, 2000 for PC) can open .cwk word processing files. I've done it. You will get a bunch of "garbage" text at the beginning & end in PC Word, but the text will be there.

on this forum.

As I doesn't own the produce, I am unable to decide which responce is the good one 😉

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE mardi 18 juillet 2006 13:09:22)

Hello Dale

I assumes that you are right

I am right. I've done it.

but I assumed the same thing when I read these
sentences:
Newer versions of Word for both the Mac & the PC
(2001 for Mac, 2000 for PC) can open .cwk word
processing files. I've done it. You will get a bunch
of "garbage" text at the beginning & end in PC Word,
but the text will be there.

They didn't work 'cause they're the PC version of Word. You'll note that I specifically stated the Mac version of Word will open AW WP documents. You can check MacTopia (Microsoft's Mac web pages) to confirm that the Mac version indeed opens AW WP documents.)

Dale

Yes, the Mac version of Word 2004 opens AppleWorks files without problems. I'll have to send myself a .cwk file to work to try PC Word again. As I said, I've done it before, but I will double-check what else comes through in the translation.

I just opened an AppleWorks 6 word processing document in Word 2000 on my work PC (I think it's 2000, it might be newer) & as I said before, there was a lot of "garbage" text but the raw text is there. It also lost formatting.

... does Mac have a simple word processor?

Yes; it's called TextEdit, and it's quite capable.

A description of AppleWorks is available on this page.

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In TextEdit, go to Format>New Document and choose plain text instead of Rich Text.