Need Mac Old-Timer Input

Anybody here ever used Microsoft Word 6.0 (1993) for Mac or Windows? It came with awesome macro capabilities.

I am currently using Word 6.0 on an older Powerbook G4 (17" 1.67 GHz) to process a gigantic 4,000 page document with the assistance of macros.

I have a problem, though: That Powerbook is the last Macintosh computer ever produced that will work with Word 6.0. It won't work on any Apple computer with an Intel processor.

So I was thinking the other day...I wonder if the old Microsoft Word 6.0 Windows version (DOS, I believe) is compatible with Intel processors. If so, and I could get a hold of that Windows version of Word 6.0, I'd be able to upgrade to either a new Apple computer or a new PC for my word processing work.

Anybody know how that works? And if not, does anyone know of a good Mac forum for discussion of topics related to older Mac computers?

The Windows - DOS version of Word 6 will only work on an Intel machine. But you can forget about it working on a Mac or even a new PC.

Some of our members have experience with old machines and may be some help to you.

When Word 6 came out it was considered large and bloated. Personally, I thought it was great. Worked fine on my iMac with OS 9.
Even if you could fine a DOS version, good luck getting it to run on pretty much anything available now. I don't know of anything currently able to run DOS or even Windows 3.5 and even if it could, don't know if I'd want it.

Finish the project you have in your present environment, and then start looking for substitutes. First stop should probably be -- wait for it -- Microsoft Office (the current version). Second stop -- LibreOffice (if option one doesn't work out).

Ahh chas you are seeing the light!!

MountainDawg said:

Anybody here ever used Microsoft Word 6.0 (1993) for Mac or Windows? It came with awesome macro capabilities.

I am currently using Word 6.0 on an older Powerbook G4 (17" 1.67 GHz) to process a gigantic 4,000 page document with the assistance of macros.

I have a problem, though: That Powerbook is the last Macintosh computer ever produced that will work with Word 6.0. It won't work on any Apple computer with an Intel processor.

So I was thinking the other day...I wonder if the old Microsoft Word 6.0 Windows version (DOS, I believe) is compatible with Intel processors. If so, and I could get a hold of that Windows version of Word 6.0, I'd be able to upgrade to either a new Apple computer or a new PC for my word processing work.

Anybody know how that works? And if not, does anyone know of a good Mac forum for discussion of topics related to older Mac computers?

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish. It's possible to get Word/Mac 6.0 to work on a recent Intel-based Mac using an emulator like SheepShaver. And it's possible to get a copy of Word/PC 6.0 to work on a recent Intel-based Mac using a virtualization program like Parallels or Fusion. But what's the point?

You can get a recent Intel-based Mac, and the very latest copy of Microsoft Office:
Microsoft Office for Mac | Office For Mac
and though you can no longer open Word 4 and earlier documents in the latest version of Word, you can still open Word 5 and 6 documents if you use the Open dialog box within Word, and the Visual Basic macro language is still the same also.

Note that while LibreOffice, and the other similar OpenOffice-based suites, are very nice clones of Microsoft Office, they don't use Visual Basic for macros. So your existing macros created in Word wouldn't work in LibreOffice. I also don't know how old of a Microsoft Word file their translators can handle. So, in your case, an OpenOffice-based alternative probably won't be satisfactory.

Can you describe the problem you are having? I have Word 6 for Mac running on multiple older Macs (both 68K based and PPC based). I might be able to help.

MountainDawg said:

does anyone know of a good Mac forum for discussion of topics related to older Mac computers?

Click to expand...

For forums related to older Macs, look no farther than Apple themselves! See:

https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/classic_mac_os