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How can I open files created in ClarisWorks 2 or 3?

Although I can still run AppleWorks 6 (in Snow Leopard) I am trying to 'future proof' my AW documents (WP, SS, DR, PT) by opening them and then saving them either as RTF, PDF, Excel, Word, or JPEG files.

Unfortunately, I can only open pre-1996 WP documents in TextEdit (all formatting gone) and cannot open pre-1996 SS documents at all. Is there any application that will open documents created in ClarisWorks 2 or 3? I've tried AW itself, and LibreOffice, to no avail. (I do still have the CW2 app but as I have an Intel Mac and no way of running Classic, that's no good to me).

iMac Core i5 12GB RAM-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Aug 28, 2014 3:11 AM

Top-ranking reply

fosnola

Level 1

126 points

Posted on Aug 28, 2014 5:32 AM

Hello,

to convert ClarisWorks files with AppleWorks, it is better to use AppleWorks 6.2.4 (or maybe 6.2.7), see AppleWorks for the modern day, a migration tip ; i.e. unfortunately AppleWorks 6.2.9 fails to open/convert many ClarisWorks files :-~

Concerning LibreOffice, you must avoid LibreOffice 4.3.0 ( which has a problem with many filters on OSX ): as you have some spreadsheet files, the best is probably to try LibreOffice 4.3.1 RC1 which must be able to open most of these files. If this fails, you can try to download mwawOSX in http://sourceforge.net/projects/libmwaw/files ( also free), i.e. I have corrected a file detection's problem in the new version of libmwaw, so it may work better than LibreOffice ( which includes an older version of libmwaw )....

Notes:

- another solution may be to emulate a Mac Classic ( using for instance miniVMac http://minivmac.sourceforge.net : free if you still have some Mac Roms :-~ ) and then to run your version of ClarisWorks.

- if you find some files that mwawOSX fails to convert and that are not confidential, I may be interested to see them...

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19 replies

fosnola

Level 1

126 points

Aug 30, 2014 1:05 AM in response to christopher rigby1

Hello,

concerning the 1900/1904 date problem, normally this problem was fixed in libmwaw-0.3.2 (*). The problem was that the dates are stored as decimal numbers: the number of days since 1/1/1904, so when I find a date format, I must read the date's decimal number and convert it to a date using standard date functions and I forgot to change the origin back to 1900 before calling these functions.

Concerning the language format's problem, actually, I only find that a cell must be displayed using the first/second/... date/time/number formats. As I do not know how to retrieve the language of the document (**), I choose to use the US formats lacking a better solution :-~ So I do not know if this can be fixed and how to fix it :-~

(*) which may only appear in LibreOffice 4.4.0. You can test if it is repaired by downloading mwawOSX on the libmwaw download pages : https://sourceforge.net/projects/libmwaw/files/

(**) I do not even know if it is stored in the document or if it is the localized application which defined it :-~

Aug 30, 2014 1:18 AM in response to Csound1

Csound1 wrote:

PC (Windows) systems calculate dates from a zero point of 1900, OS X uses 1904 (don't ask me why)

The advantage of using 1904 is that every fourth year is a leap year right through to 2099; 1900 was not a leap year but 2000 was. If you start from January 1900 you have to allow for no February 29th. (Centuries are not leap years but millennia are.) Early pocket calculators with date calculations used 1904 as the start point for this reason.

Modern computers can take this into account easily enough - OSX calendar shows the correct dates for February 1900.

Csound1

Level 9

60,033 points

Aug 30, 2014 2:47 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Thanks for that, one less thing that I don't know 🙂 I'll get on the rest later.

I have no idea whether this is a factor in the OP's scenario, just noting the coincidental nature

Sep 1, 2014 7:46 AM in response to fosnola

fosnola wrote:

Hello,

concerning the 1900/1904 date problem, normally this problem was fixed in libmwaw-0.3.2 (*). The problem was that the dates are stored as decimal numbers: the number of days since 1/1/1904, so when I find a date format, I must read the date's decimal number and convert it to a date using standard date functions and I forgot to change the origin back to 1900 before calling these functions.

Concerning the language format's problem, actually, I only find that a cell must be displayed using the first/second/... date/time/number formats. As I do not know how to retrieve the language of the document (**), I choose to use the US formats lacking a better solution :-~ So I do not know if this can be fixed and how to fix it :-~

(*) which may only appear in LibreOffice 4.4.0. You can test if it is repaired by downloading mwawOSX on the libmwaw download pages : https://sourceforge.net/projects/libmwaw/files/

(**) I do not even know if it is stored in the document or if it is the localized application which defined it :-~

I'm glad to hear that the '4 year' problem can be fixed. 🙂

The other matter - language formats - puzzles me. Why should LibreOffice need to know the format of the original? Surely, if a user has declared "English (UK)" everywhere else, then you can assume they are going to import documents in that format - in other words, it's up to the user what language format is displayed, not LibreOffice. So there is no 'fix' involved, except in giving the user a wider choice of conversion language formats to use. If they choose the wrong one, it's their fault and they will have to correct it.

But in my case, I was converting my own (UK) documents where the originals used UK dates, and that's what I expected to see after conversion. However, mine are all done now, so that won't be a problem again. 😉

Having said all that, I still say LibreOffice is a superb app especially as it's free!

How can I open files created in ClarisWorks 2 or 3?