rlinict

Q: Is there an app to open appleworks in OSX Mavericks?

Is there an app to open appleworks in OSX Mavericks?

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012), OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Mar 5, 2014 2:53 PM

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Q: Is there an app to open appleworks in OSX Mavericks?

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  • by Roger Wilmut1,

    Roger Wilmut1 Roger Wilmut1 Mar 5, 2014 3:08 PM in response to rlinict
    Level 9 (77,712 points)
    iTunes
    Mar 5, 2014 3:08 PM in response to rlinict

    Not as such.

     

    • 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). LibreOffice will open simple Draw documents but I found it very unreliable with complex ones.
    • 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.

     

    If you have upgraded to Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks 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 Server under emulation in Parallels - the method is described here: AFAIK Snow Leopard Server is still available in the Apple Store (by telephone) at a reduced price and is preferable to using ordinary Snow Leopard which is quite tricky. I haven't tried this myself: use at your own discretion. You can then run AppleWorks as an emergency measure.

     

    This article looks in detail at migrating from Appleworks:

     

    http://rfwilmut.net/aw

  • by Richard Campbell4,

    Richard Campbell4 Richard Campbell4 Jul 1, 2014 6:12 PM in response to Roger Wilmut1
    Level 1 (29 points)
    Jul 1, 2014 6:12 PM in response to Roger Wilmut1

    I put on 2 external drives, one 2TB on a Firewire port and the other a 2TB on a USB port.  I did the first drive while I was still on Snow Leopard. I partitioned the drives and copied the Snow Leopard system to a partition on the drive using Super Duper and also made it bootable.  One of the other partitions is a full bootable backup of the latest System(Now Mavericks), the other partitions are used for Time Machine and a blank partition I use for a copy of a System before I go to a major update. 

    The other drive I usually only hook up maybe once a week or so then unhook it, lots of thunderstorms around here.  When I hook it up I do a full bootable copy of the HD and let the Time Machine do a backup on its partition.

    I have been slowly trying to convert wanted Appleworks Docs and Spreadsheets to Word or Excel with-in Appleworks, then save them on the partition.

    Then using the Mavericks system I use the finder to look at the files on the Snow Leopard partition and just drag the converted files onto the desktop.  I usually can open  those files with Open Office and save as a newer version.

    Lets face it I am retired and have a lot of time.

  • by tasa,

    tasa tasa Jul 15, 2014 6:46 AM in response to rlinict
    Level 1 (50 points)
    Jul 15, 2014 6:46 AM in response to rlinict

    If they are text-only documents you can open both AppleWorks and Clarisworks documents in TextEdit, then copy and paste into new Pages documents. The TE docs will show a lot of garbage (I don't know the technical term for these characters) before and after the body of the original document, so once it's been imported into Pages you'll have to clean it up. It's a pretty simple, straightforward process to use and functional if you're just trying to archive old documents, and the only cost is your time.

  • by Peggy,

    Peggy Peggy Jul 15, 2014 1:09 PM in response to rlinict
    Level 8 (38,720 points)
    Applications
    Jul 15, 2014 1:09 PM in response to rlinict

    Try the latest version of the free LibreOffice. It can open a variety of AppleWorks & ClarisWorks documents although not all.

     

     Peggy_sig.png

  • by fosnola,

    fosnola fosnola Jul 16, 2014 12:22 AM in response to Peggy
    Level 1 (126 points)
    Jul 16, 2014 12:22 AM in response to Peggy

    Hello,

    normally, LibreOffice 4.3 will be able to open more documents: word processing, drawing, paint, database and spreadsheet (*)(**) but the not presentation documents. So if you have documents which completely fail to be converted and there are not confidential, proprietary, ... I will be happy to see them....

     

    (*) in fact, there can be some problem with few v1-v3 documents as I have used the bad offset to detect the document types: i.e.. there are two, one to define the document type and one to define the type of the component which is currently edited (and I have used this component type) which may lead to bad detection and a failure to convert the document :-~ I find this recently, this is corrected in the main branch of libmwaw, but this correction will probably only appear in LibreOffice 4.4...

    (**) concerning the database/spreadsheet documents, actually, it only tries to convert the cell/record contents: number/text/date/time/formula fields and the cells' formatting but none embedded frames, pictures, filters, reports, .... Moreover, concerning the date fields, I have used 1/1/1900 instead of 1/1/1904 as reference's date :-~ This is also corrected in the main branch of libmwaw ....

  • by christopher rigby1,

    christopher rigby1 christopher rigby1 Jul 16, 2014 10:52 AM in response to rlinict
    Level 4 (2,146 points)
    Jul 16, 2014 10:52 AM in response to rlinict

    You can probably get hold of Pages 4 etc (iWork ?'08 ?'09) from eBay, which is where I got my copy from. I'm still using Snow Leopard, so I could still use AppleWorks theoretically, but I don't want to. I long ago converted all of my WP and SS documents to Word, Excel and RTF versions. I do still have some DR documents, but LibreOffice will open those if necessary. I don't know if iDraw will, but that's probably the app of choice for creating drawing documents in the future.

  • by randywilson99,

    randywilson99 randywilson99 Nov 22, 2014 10:42 AM in response to rlinict
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 22, 2014 10:42 AM in response to rlinict

    Yes. The free (open source) software package Libre Office can do this.


    In fact, I wrote a script that uses the free Libre Office to batch convert AppleWorks (.cwk) to MS Word (.docx, which can be read by both Pages and MS Word). See http://axon.cs.byu.edu/~randy/cwk2docx.html

  • by Richard Campbell4,

    Richard Campbell4 Richard Campbell4 Dec 28, 2014 1:34 PM in response to rlinict
    Level 1 (29 points)
    Dec 28, 2014 1:34 PM in response to rlinict

    Try LibreOffice  works great for me on Yosemite

    Have used it for a couple of weeks now

  • by christopher rigby1,

    christopher rigby1 christopher rigby1 Dec 28, 2014 2:42 PM in response to Richard Campbell4
    Level 4 (2,146 points)
    Dec 28, 2014 2:42 PM in response to Richard Campbell4

    Yes I can concur with Richard. Although still running Snow Leopard and therefore still able to run AW, today I installed Yosemite on an external drive and found LibreOffice would open a WP document just fine. From past experience, it will also manage SS (spreadsheets) and more recently DR (vector graphics/drawing) documents too.

     

    You don't need to worry about PT (painting) files as any half decent graphics editor will open those. In fact, the only thing that apparently there is nothing to open with is the DB (database) files.

  • by VikingOSX,

    VikingOSX VikingOSX Dec 29, 2014 6:23 AM in response to christopher rigby1
    Level 7 (20,544 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 29, 2014 6:23 AM in response to christopher rigby1

    If you had read Fosnola's post above, or looked at this very recent post, you would have noted that LibreOffice has some ability to open AppleWorks databases. At this point, your mileage may vary based on the individual database content.

  • by Roger Wilmut1,

    Roger Wilmut1 Roger Wilmut1 Dec 29, 2014 3:03 PM in response to christopher rigby1
    Level 9 (77,712 points)
    iTunes
    Dec 29, 2014 3:03 PM in response to christopher rigby1

    christopher rigby1 wrote:

     

    You don't need to worry about PT (painting) files as any half decent graphics editor will open those.

    I don't think any graphic programs will open Paint documents are they are in AW's own format. LibreOffice will make a shot at opening them, though the last time I tried this the results weren't very good. I don't have any Paint documents to try with at present.

     

    I just tried it with a Database just now and it did open it in spreadsheet form - obviously only the data, no formatting.

  • by Peggy,

    Peggy Peggy Dec 29, 2014 4:53 PM in response to Roger Wilmut1
    Level 8 (38,720 points)
    Applications
    Dec 29, 2014 4:53 PM in response to Roger Wilmut1

    Even the wonderful GraphicConverter can't open AppleWorks paint documents. I first used GraphicConverter many many years ago when I moved from AppleWorks GS on my IIgs to my first Mac, an LC. GraphicConverter did a creditable job on the conversions so I was surprised to find that it couldn't open ClarisWorks/AppleWorks for Mac paint files. I met Thorsten Lemke at a MacWorld Expo several years ago & asked him about it. He is very shy & mumbled something about licensing.

  • by christopher rigby1,

    christopher rigby1 christopher rigby1 Dec 30, 2014 11:14 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1
    Level 4 (2,146 points)
    Dec 30, 2014 11:14 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

    Roger Wilmut1 wrote:

     

    christopher rigby1 wrote:

     

    You don't need to worry about PT (painting) files as any half decent graphics editor will open those.

    I don't think any graphic programs will open Paint documents are they are in AW's own format. LibreOffice will make a shot at opening them, though the last time I tried this the results weren't very good. I don't have any Paint documents to try with at present.

     

    I just tried it with a Database just now and it did open it in spreadsheet form - obviously only the data, no formatting.

     

    I'd forgotten we were talking about the native AW painting format - the few times I ever created a PT rather than a DR document, I saved them as JPEGs (or PICTs, in the very early days!). I can't think why anyone would ever bother with the native AW PT format when there are so many others on offer?

     

    HOWEVER. I just created a PT document in AW6 (God, it's slow...) and saved it in the AW native format. Sure enough, nothing would open it ... except LibreOffice which opened it without any problem at all.

  • by Unkle e,

    Unkle e Unkle e Feb 3, 2016 8:23 PM in response to Roger Wilmut1
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 3, 2016 8:23 PM in response to Roger Wilmut1

    I have found the same as others. Pages was my first choice after we upgraded from a very old Mac, but couldn't read Appleworks files. LibreOffice does basic text files easily, not so good if there are graphics included, but quite an acceptable alternative. It is hard to see why Apple had the translators in the earlier Pages, but took them out, as it only makes their own software less useful. Thankfully LibreOffice is around.

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