opening OS9 documents on Leopard

My old mac broke down the other day—the disc still operates but the mouse and keyboard aren't working and I've been told repair costs would be $500 or more—so I bought a new MacBook. I'm very happy with it except for the horrifying discovery that I can't read any of the thousands of documents I'd created using an old version of Microsoft Word running under Classic.

Short of getting my old computer fixed or buying a used one, is there anything I can do to solve this problem? (I don't need to be able to modify the documents and losing formatting wouldn't be the end of the world. I just have to have access to the text.)

(One thing I've been wondering about is whether I could read them with the current version of Microsoft Word for Mac.)

regards to all from

flunn

Would there be any way you could send one sample doc and I will try it here on every Word Processor I have which is most of them. It's been ages since I used Word for OS7-8.

G'day fiunn and welcome to the Forums. Shame you have lost OS 9 machine, however Classic and Leopard just do not go together with Classic support being dropped altogther.

If it is only the keyboard and mouse see if you can pick up these items from eBay, or alternatively say a cheap Quicksilver running OS 9 and OS X, and set up the old drive as external and transfer the files.

if they are Word documents, then opening them in Word would seem to be the most sensible thing to do...

how do I send the file

Thanks to dtravis7 and others for the replies.

I would be happy to send a sample file, but I've never done a forum posting with an attachment.

I'd appreciate it if you could tell me how this is done.

flunn

Later: I figured out how to send an attachment but when I tried to upload one of the unreadable files, I was told it was "invalid."

Is there anything I can do about this?

For under $500 you certainly can pick up a used Mac and maybe with more horse power.

You don't say what kind of model you have. It sounds to me like what is wrong is the controller or connect that the keyboard connects to is messed up. If the box has another connector of the same type you might try that, although if it is the controller, then the two ports probably share it and you be out of luck.

I thought Microsoft had a free download and try before you buy option, but I didn't see it on their site.

Perhaps you could try one of the Office alternatives.

Lastly if you could somehow get a VNC server to run on that broken box, you could remotely control it from the new Mac.

Sorry it took me this long to get back to you. I tried it on my PowerMac G4 that has Office 2004 installed. Opened perfectly! Not one other app including NeoOffice, iWork 08 and a few others would open it without totally messing it up.

The Home/Student version of Office is not that bad price wise. It looked perfect in Office here though on the Mac.

Hello, dtravis7, just got your message.

Thanks for doing that work. Glad to hear you could open the file.

But—just to check—were you running Leopard on that computer? If you were, I'll certainly look into buying that software. (I assume it would be possible, and cheaper just to buy Word instead of the whole Office package.)

best regards and thanks again

flunn

Some have complained about Office 2004 having issues on Leopard. I have had no issues at all with 2004 Office on 10.5.

Do remember, I am using Office 2004 and not the current Office.

Good, and I suppose the current Office would be less likely to have problems on Leopard — or at least no more likely.

f

The latest Office is really made for 10.5 so less. You can get the Home version for maybe $130. Either that or look for a used copy of 2004 on Ebay for cheap.