Migrating FROM Appleworks

[Site Admin]

The question is often asked "I've got many AppleWorks documents I need to keep but AppleWorks will not run on the new Mac I just got. What do I do now"?

Well I just received an email message from an AppleWorks colleague with a link for a very thorough examination of AppleWorks and several possible approaches for migrating from AppleWorks to newer programs that will run in the latest operating systems Apple is publishing, i.e. Lion and Mountain Lion.

Check it out, very interesting and informative:

http://www.wilmut.webspace.virginmedia.com/notes/aw/page1.html

[Rsstroud]

I learned that I can open AppleWorks WP documents on Yosemite intact with no new software! This process has worked on every WP document (without imbedded spreadsheets) I have tried. Here is the process:

1. Find file and change the suffix from .cwk to .txt

2. Click on file and it will open in Text Edit (!) , with much unneeded info before and after the desired text.

3. The top line starts with .BOBO and the string goes to the very first line of the desired text. Select and cut this string.

4. Go to the end of the desired text and find a “Z", which is the start of the rather large amount of the remaining unwanted text. Select it and cut it.

5. Name and close the file. It will save itself as modified.

Couldn’t be much easier.

I found that a few tab spaces were omitted, but not many. Also center alignment of text will not be preserved.

Note that WP files containing drawings or imbedded spreadsheets will not open correctly using this method. For drawing files, Intaglio does a very good job. LibreOffice is less accurate but does open the drawing files.

Thanks,

Richard