How can I convert my Appleworks 6 word processor and spreadsheets files to Pages and Numbers for OS 10.9?

This is a summary of the situation:

• Word Processing documents can be opened directly in Pages 4 (AppleWorks 6 only) but this is no longer available - the newPages 5 (Mavericks required) does not open AppleWorks documents. 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). The latest version of the free LibreOffice 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).
• Spreadsheets can be opened directly only in the older versions of Numbers - the new version for Mavericks will not do this. The old version is no longer available.
• Presentations can be opened directly only in the older versions Keynote; again, the new version for Mavericks will not do this. The old version is no longer available.

It may still be possible to get iWork '09, which includes Pages 4 and Numbers 2, from Amazon or other independent retailers. It's no longer sold by Apple.

My article here looks at the situation in more detail:

http://rfwilmut.net/aw

Hi Roger,

Fruhulda reports today in this thread: converting apple works files that Libre Office can now open AW Paint files.

Regards,

Barry

Thanks - I'll amend my site.

I was a bit hasty. LO 4.1.4 opens Draw documents but it is LO 4.2 that is under developement that opens the Pict files.

Thanks... I'll remove it again! We shall have to see how it develops - but AW Paint documents aren't PICT files so whether it will actually open those remains moot until it's issued.

I tried v4.1.4 with some Draw documents - it opened simple ones OK but made a complete mess of a couple of complex ones to the point where they were not retrievable.

Sorry to hear that. I only have simple ones I guess. Hopefully fosnola will see this thread. Fosnola helps developing LibreOffice.

If anyone wants something to play with, this is a complex AW Draw document you can download:

http://rfwilmut.net/share/AW_Draw_test.zip

Hello Roger,

normally, LibreOffice 4.2 will give a much better result on this kind of document than LibreOffice 4.1 : page 1,2 and 4 must be almost ok now, but there remains some big problems in page 3 with the ordering of shapes ( and the problem that LibreOffice can be very slow when there is a lot of shapes to display :-~ ).

Concerning the AW paint file, actually :

- LibreOffice 4.2 must be able to retrieve almost all bitmaps(*), but does not retrieve their real size, so there actually appears at the beginning of the document with a very small size ( and you must enlarge them by hand )...

- LibreOffice 4.1 does allow to retrieve some bitmaps but with the added constrain that the number of row's pixels must be even :-~

(*) excepted some bitmaps which have less than 16 colors, I need to finalize version 0.2.1 of libmwaw which will correct this problem :-~

Note:

- as a pre-release version of LibreOffice 4.2 can be found in http://www.libreoffice.org/download/pre-releases/ , probably the best way is to download it to test it

Downloaded v4.2.0.1. It still has the incompatibility with QuicKeys which causes it to crash if QuicKeys is running (I have reported this to both companies but no-one seems interested in it).

It coped much better with my Draw documents than the older version; a number of lines missing on page 3, and though most of the other objects are correctly placed all the lines are very much thicker than they should be. It is of course a much more complicated document than many people are likely to be concerned with.

Opening a Paint document worked as you describe - a small inline image but which can be expanded. I can add that to my page when it gets out of beta, (Perhaps you could announce it in this forum as it is relevant to AW and I don't want to keep checking the LO website.)

Hello,

> It coped much better with my Draw documents than the older version

Normally, I have added many functionnalities, retrieving the bitmap, gradient, ... But there remains some problem when a group/frame shares some shapes and a picture or when a shape crosses differents pages, the result can be become bad, ...

> a number of lines missing on page 3

I suspect there are here, ie. if you select in page 3 the big gray square with two ellipses and remove it, there seem to reappear ( I do not know why this square insists to hide the other shapes even when I put it in background, ....)

> the lines are very much thicker than they should be

All objects are thicker than they should be, mainly because I need to create a embedded Odg for each shapes. This will change in LibreOffice 4.3 because we have added in the parent library of libmwaw, functions to create shapes directly ; at least for line, rectangle, ellipse, probably not for other shapes...

> I can add that to my page when it gets out of beta, (Perhaps you could announce it in this forum as it is relevant to AW and I don't want to keep checking the LO website.)

Ok, I will try to add a message when LibreOffice 4.2 will appear ( note: as I only write an extension used in LibreOffice, I also do not keep checking the LO website, I only check now and then that all is working ).

This is what page 3 should look like (download):

http://rfwilmut.net/share/draw.png.zip

I thought I'd piggy back my question here although I posted elsewhere.

I have many documents in the Claris/Appleworks and Apple6 formats dating back to the 1990s . I want to convert them to Pages and would prefer not to do it one document at a time. Any suggestions? Or is it impossible? I want to upgrade and my hubby said I will lose all my old works which he found out the hard way.

Hello,

this is possible using some AppleScripts : old appleworks files(thread 45 and latest), first you need to launch a script to convert the older files in AppleWorks 6 ( this requires to have a working AppleWorks 6.2.4 or previous version, i.e.. the latest AppleWorks has trouble converting old ClarisWorks files ), then to convert the resulting files to Pages ( using iWorks 09, i.e. the latest versions no longer open AppleWorks files )

Note: if you want to convert them in another formats:

• the filter ( used by LibreOffice ) can also be used via AppleScript to convert a bunch of files in Odt ( see mwawOSX in https://sourceforge.net/projects/libmwaw/files/?source=navbar ), but it is less advanced,
• I suppose that docXConverter (not free) cited in http://www.wilmut.webspace.virginmedia.com/notes/aw/page1.html can also convert a list a AppleWorks 5/6 files, but I never test it.

This worked very well. Thanks so much for your assistance!!