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

Question

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

Hi

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

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

fosnola

Level 1

126 points

Aug 28, 2014 5:32 AM in response to christopher rigby1

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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Answer 2

Csound1

Level 9

60,033 points

Aug 28, 2014 5:35 AM in response to christopher rigby1

Libre Office will open text and spreadsheet files well, graphics files not very well and database files not at all.

4.3 works fine, no need to play with pre-release versions.

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Answer 3

fosnola

Level 1

126 points

Aug 28, 2014 5:47 AM in response to Csound1

Hello,

unfortunately on OSX, all LibreOffice 4.3.0's librevenge filters(*) only work if you have installed by hand librevenge, see https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=82035 . This problem was corrected in the 4.3.1 release candidate

So yes, for some users, LibreOffice 4.3.0 may work ( which explain that this problem was found very late ), but for the majority of users, this is not true.

(*) at least this was true with the main version compiled in the first week of August, I do not check if another version 4.3.0 was compiled since, but since this version was mean to be the final 4.3.0 version, ... :-~

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Answer 4

Aug 28, 2014 7:59 AM in response to fosnola

Yes! I already had LibreOffice 4.1.5 so I upgraded to 4.3.1 and the spreadsheet opens (so do the WP files, but they aren't so important as TextEdit could open them without formatting).

Many thanks - LibreOffice does the job 🙂

(Just one small question, in AW spreadsheets you could limit the number of rows and columns to what you wanted - in LibreOffice, and also in Excel, you can't; as fast as you delete rows beneath or columns to the right, more spring up to take their place. It's probably a very basic thing, but how do you do it?)

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Answer 5

Csound1

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60,033 points

Aug 28, 2014 8:02 AM in response to christopher rigby1

You can't in short, but you can limit what the print area is if that is what you want.

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Answer 6

Aug 28, 2014 9:11 AM in response to Csound1

No, I just wanted a neat looking document like AW used to deliver - where the viewer cannot see empty rows or columns beyond the limit set for that particular document. Seems that AW had 'one up' on Excel in that regard. 😟

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Answer 7

fosnola

Level 1

126 points

Aug 29, 2014 1:14 AM in response to christopher rigby1

Hello,

Number 3.2 can do that ; so if you have iWork, you can try in LibreOffice to save the converted documents in xls (*) and to open the exported file with Number...

(*) or xlsx or xlm, I do not know which one is better.

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Answer 8

fosnola

Level 1

126 points

Aug 29, 2014 1:19 AM in response to Csound1

Hello,

Csound1 wrote:

Libre Office will open .... and database files not at all.

it does open the few databases that I have, which are very simple databases. Do you have some not confidential database files that LibreOffice refuses to open and that you can send to me to try to correct the problem ?

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Answer 9

Csound1

Level 9

60,033 points

Aug 29, 2014 2:25 AM in response to fosnola

I converted mine a while back so have none left now,

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Answer 10

Aug 29, 2014 9:40 AM in response to fosnola

Hi

Although I did manage to open the Claris 2 (or 3) spreadsheets in LibreOffice, it's not quite the ideal solution I thought at first. There are a few problems. Let me list them :

I could set 'English (UK)" for everything except the User Interface, which only offers "English (USA)" - nothing else. As a result of this there were the following problems:
- 1. Dates converted into the mad USA format (MMDDYY) and had to be reset for each document imported (the originals are UK/World format)
- 2. Currency figures showed up as $ even when I'd set Currency to be GBP £ (UK) - I had to select the cells, Format.., Currency, then OK
- 3. Sometimes the Currency showed as USD so I had to reset to GBP £ (UK)
Apart from these USA > UK problems, there was another problem with dates : I found that LibreOffice had subtracted 4 from the YY in the dates column: so instead of 5/4/98 it showed 5/4/94. It was easy enough to correct with Find/Replace, but nevertheless annoying, and very very weird.

That aside, the conversion was pretty good really. The frustration was having to re-convert when I discovered a new issue. I hope that helps.

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Answer 11

Csound1

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60,033 points

Aug 29, 2014 9:49 AM in response to christopher rigby1

The 'ideal' solution was to convert them In Claris to something that would last, had we known we would need to 🙂. As an alternative to not being able to open them Libre works well. hopefully it will continue to improve (along with the support for Publisher)

The 4 year date offset is strange, the difference between PC's and Mac's date counting system is exactly 4 years but the applications should take care of the conversion. Something else is going on there.

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Answer 12

Aug 29, 2014 9:59 AM in response to Csound1

That IS weird. I had 4 spreadsheets to convert, each one a 'year-end accounts' based on the one before it. Each one had an initial column with dates in (though I'm not sure if they were original defined as dates in AW or simply as text?).

When converted by LibreOffice, as well as the 'mad' American thing, there was a subtraction of 4 years as I've mentioned ... perhaps it is due to the difference between PCs and Macs? LO 4.3.1 is very new, I believe? In which case, maybe there are still one or two bugs to be ironed out. Having said that, it's a very nice app. 🙂

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Answer 13

Csound1

Level 9

60,033 points

Aug 29, 2014 12:43 PM in response to christopher rigby1

PC (Windows) systems calculate dates from a zero point of 1900, OS X uses 1904 (don't ask me why) it's such an old issue that it was solved while you and I were a lot younger. I don't know if this is a factor in your problem but it is a coincidence.

And you should be able to reformat the date field from US to UK.

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Answer 14

Aug 29, 2014 1:53 PM 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) it's such an old issue that it was solved while you and I were a lot younger. I don't know if this is a factor in your problem but it is a coincidence.

I suppose so. It is strange though. I can't see any reason for it, but like I said, I don't remember (20 years ago!) whether I defined it as a date field - or even if AW supported them. LibreOffice has definitely recognised them as dates though, as they were converted to American dates.

And you should be able to reformat the date field from US to UK.

Yes, I did. It was easier than getting the 4 years back! It's just irritating that it converted them American-style to start with - after all, I set every Preference to 'English UK', except the User Interface which didn't have that option. I think it must be the User Interface that has resulted in dollars and MMDDYY, so perhaps that could be changed? (But for a free app, it's a minor miracle anyway 🙂)

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Answer 15

Csound1

Level 9

60,033 points

Aug 29, 2014 2:16 PM in response to fosnola

PC (Windows) systems calculate dates from a zero point of 1900, OS X uses 1904 (don't ask me why) it's such an old issue that it was solved while you and I were a lot younger. I don't know if this is a factor in your problem but it is a coincidence.

I suppose so. It is strange though. I can't see any reason for it, but like I said, I don't remember (20 years ago!) whether I defined it as a date field - or even if AW supported them. LibreOffice has definitely recognised them as dates though, as they were converted to American dates.

Don't understand that myself, I am not sure that this is even caused by that ancient difference.

And you should be able to reformat the date field from US to UK.

Yes, I did. It was easier than getting the 4 years back! It's just irritating that it converted them American-style to start with - after all, I set every Preference to 'English UK', except the User Interface which didn't have that option. I think it must be the User Interface that has resulted in dollars and MMDDYY, so perhaps that could be changed? (But for a free app, it's a minor miracle anyway)

And I don't get that behaviour, all formats are retained so again I have no answer, but at least it is a quick fix. Blame it on the NSA meddling. 😕

Libre is so good (especially for a free app) that I sent them some money. I hope they spend it on filters for Access and AW/CW database and graphics files.

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