Transfer files

ApppleWorks can't run directly on Intel Macs, and requires Rosetta (in effect a PPC emulator built into OSX). I understand that for technical and practical reasons it's not possible to upgrade the coding: and it has been officially 'end-of-lifed' by Apple: it's no longer sold by them, nor is it supported. OSX Lion and later versions do not support Rosetta and so it's impossible to run Appleworks on them.

This is then 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). 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.

To use other programs, or open Database documents at all, you must export from AppleWorks first.

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. You can then run AppleWorks as an emergency measure.

This article examines alternatives to Appleworks:

http://rfwilmut.net/aw