How can I preserve files on AppleWorks 6 and DVX if I download OSX Mavericks?

You cannot preserve those as Appleworks will not work with Mavericks (actually has not worked with the newer OS's since Lion), so you'd need to get Pages (for instance) and convert your docs first (you won't be able to open them once you have Mavericks installed). I had to do the same thing.

Or, you can partition your hard drive, keep Snow Leopard on one, install it (exact cuplicate) on the other and upgrade that to Mavericks. Then you could boot from either OS.

There is a Mavericks compatible version of DIVX, just download that, no need to keep one that won't work.

Waingrow wrote:

I am currently using OS X 10.68 which is no longer supported.

Not correct.

The latest Pages v5.2 and Numbers 3.2 for Mavericks no longer support opening AppleWorks documents of any vintage. They also lack substantial functionality found in previous versions (Pages ’09 v4.3, Numbers 2.3) which could open AppleWorks v6 WP and spreadsheet documents.

It is the Rosetta (PowerPC emulation) functionality that was dropped beginning with 10.7.

I have opened random AppleWorks v5 and v6 documents in the free LibreOffice v4.2.4 release on Mavericks.

After you back up everything you want to keep, you could preserve the AppleWorks functionality:

1. Additional local drive partition with OS X 10.6.8 installed
2. Bootable external drive with OS X 10.6.8 installed
3. Parallel Desktop Virtual Machine with OS X 10.6.8 (10.6.3 server updated to 10.6.8) installed.
   1. OS X 10.6.3 server is $20USD via Apple Store phone-in order only.
   2. Parallels 9 - about $80USD.
   3. 8 GB of memory in that iMac (minimum of 4GB) without installation of the VM solution.

Michael (LAX) has significant experience with the Parallels/OS X server solution.

I have opened random AppleWorks v5 and v6 documents in the free LibreOffice v4.2.4 release on Mavericks.

I was not aware of that - will it read both text documents and spreadsheets?

Text and Spreadsheets work fairly well (they're useable) graphics and database not so much.

Thanks! Good to know when the question comes up next......

Csound1 wrote:

Text and Spreadsheets work fairly well (they're useable) graphics and database not so much.

I believe that Roger Wilmut, the acknowledged expert on Appleworks, has stated that no other 3rd party program will open Appleworks spreadsheets directly, with the limited exception of the earlier versions of Numbers, as indicated above.

The free Office programs OpenOffice.org (no longer being developed), its close relation NeoOffice, and a more recent version LibreOffice, all have Spreadsheet modules with a reasonable range of functions. There are two useful spreadsheet programs, Tablesand Mesa, which have more limited functionality but are easy to use and suitable for all but the more complex requirements. All of these work with Snow Leopard and later.

Once again, none of these will open AppleWorks spreadsheets directly. Only the older versions of Apple's 'Numbers' will open AppleWorks spreadsheets directly, including calculations and headers and footers.

If you have direct experience that LibreOffice WILL open Appleworks spreadsheets directly, you should inform Roger of that discovery, so he can amend his excellent series of articles, Abandoning Appleworks!

VikingOSX wrote:

Michael (LAX) has significant experience with the Parallels/OS X server solution.

If babowa's partition and "dual-boot" method is not satisfactory because you need concurrent use of Appleworks and Mavericks, then use Appleworks in Snow Leopard Server in Parallels concurrently with Mavericks, as noted above:

[click on image to enlarge]

More information here:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1365439

Installing Snow Leopard Server into Parallels for DUMMIES!:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=17285039&postcount=564

My earlier comment was that it is not true that Apple is no longer supporting Snow Leopard.

You have to use the mwawcsv filter, not sure if that is installed by default. It will open the file as a csv file, so formatting will be gone.

LibreOffice 4.2.4.* on OS X 10.9.2.

AW5/AW6 WP documents from Windows or Mac open reasonably well including tables.

AW5/AW6 Spreadsheet documents (tried six random) open to jibberish.

AW5/AW6 Draw document opened rather well, though load delay.

Csound1 wrote:

You have to use the mwawcsv filter, not sure if that is installed by default. It will open the file as a csv file, so formatting will be gone.

Kind of an important piece of information to leave out; don't ya think! 🙂

This article does not show even one graphic of a spreadsheet import, nor does it mention a spreadsheet import:

http://fridrich.blogspot.de/2013/06/libreoffice-import-filter-for-legacy.html

But, if it works for you, it is one more tool in the post-Appleworks toolbox; albeit without formatting!

For VikingOSX... not so much!

Hello,

yes when Fridrich wrote this blog, even if the filter used by LibreOffice did try to convert drawing files, the result was almost always very bad, so there was no need to mention that :-)

The actual version of libmwaw included in LibreOffice 4.2 have seen some improvements and the result of the conversion of a drawing/painting files must be a lot better ( but still far from perfect ), the same is true for the conversion of word processing documents with complex layouts.

Note:

- since this filter has continued to be improved and now it tries to import the main content of a spreadsheet or a database document ( see http://sourceforge.net/p/libmwaw/wiki/Home/ ), but this new filter has almost no chance to be included in LibreOffice 4.3, probably in LibreOffice 4.4 see https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78018 .

Hello Csound1,

yes, you can also try to use directly the libmwaw library by downloading mwawCSVOSX.zip or mwawOSX.zip at http://sourceforge.net/projects/libmwaw/files/ which contain some AppleScripts which call a compiled version of mwaw2csv and mwaw2odf: two tool applications which try to convert the main content of a database/spreadshet file either in CSV or in Ods....