numbers 09 and appleworks will not open

My brother told me that textedit is "open source" or something like that. It will always work, forever. I am so tired of saving doc s for years and then not being able to open them. EVEN with the newer version. It'll say this version of the doc is too old. I am trying to go through and convert all my page-like doecs to textedit, but IS there any numbers-like/spreadsheet program that will be out there forever, that I can ALWAYS use to open old forgotten docs?

I'm not 100% sure that's true about Text Edit. I searched briefly and did not find an answer.

As far as spreadsheet programs, I am 99% sure that the answer to your question is no. I converted all my old Claris Works / AppleWorks files to Excel to extend their life. It's a project, but it doesn't take forever.

So, does excel last longer than other spreadsheet programs, like numbers? If so, i will get it. And thanks for your help.
Hey, what about Neooffice?
C

Nothing is forever except maybe death and taxes.... Excel has been around for a long time and actually was first programmed for the Mac by Microsoft. However, Numbers is a lot less expensive and works well for spreadsheets. And yes, there is OpenOffice, LibreOffice, and NeoOffice which are free and can open and edit Excel spreadsheets, Word files, and Powerpoint documents.

claudia52 said:

So, does excel last longer than other spreadsheet programs, like numbers?

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Well, to answer that would require a crystal ball. Eventually there will be a new version of any program that will not open files from an older version. This usually has to do with changes in the OS that make it not worth programming backwards compatibility into the new application version. That's a decision that will be made by Apple and Microsoft management. My sense is that Microsoft hangs on to older version compatibility longer, but is often derided as "bloatware" because of it.

thank you

thank you for all your help

claudia52 said:

My brother told me that textedit is "open source" or something like that. It will always work, forever.

Click to expand...

That's not correct (the bit about it being "open source"). I'm sure what he must have MEANT to say was that TextEdit using the most basic standards of word processing, plain text and Rich Text Format (RTF), which are two "universal" formats that every word processor understands and can open or save to.

The closest thing to a "universal" format for spreadsheets would be comma-delimited or tab-delimited text format. Microsoft's Excel formal (.xls) is nearly as universal as those.