appleworks and 10.6.8

[rlehman77]

As an author I have many documents in cwk format that I now want to access but cannot get the correct combination of (whatever) I need to get these two computer parts, one old the other newer, to work together so I can work with my documents and get them published. I wrote them on an eMac which has 9.2 Classic and 10.1 systems and Appleworks on which I wrote so much that I am unable to access. I have tried many ways to download an older version of Appleworks and a newer one to no avail. I have an old Appleworks application my eMac and MacBook Pro but I cannot get them to open to a working position. The files will open but are sloooooooow and almost frozen and will not let me change them.
The frustration level to get this working is over the top now and I need some advice to solve this problem. I've read many different ways but none have worked so far. HELP, HELP, HELP.

 

[chas_m]

AppleWorks was discontinued 10 years ago. I don't want to add to your frustration, but you really should have changed those documents over a long, long time ago.

Luckily, the previous-to-current version of Pages (which I would guess you have on your MacBook Pro) should be able to read those AppleWorks files. Otherwise, you're going to have to figure out a way to open the documents on one of your two copies of AppleWorks and save them to a standard format like Word or RTF or txt. Once that's done, you can move them anywhere using a thumb drive or cloud storage of whatever you're comfortable with.

I just tested this with some old .cwk files and Pages '09 (v4.3), which still runs in Yosemite. Worked perfectly for text files.

 

[toMACsh]

I converted some files from AppleWorks to Word and Excel for Mac a few years back. Pages and Numbers opened most of them, allowing me to then save them as .docx or .xlsx files. But some of them were stubborn, and I used Libre Office. Warning: Libre Office tends to take over as the default application. Once I finished the conversions, it was banished.

 

[hughvane]

I know your frustration with AWks files only too well. I still use AWks Drawing, which works okay most of the time. I can save documents in either .jpg or .pdf for use with other OS, returning to the original for editing if required.

Your original post states OS 10.6.8, which has, as part of its optional install functions, Rosetta (emulation software). You need to make sure that it was installed, or AWks will not function.

You have another option available to you, and that is the purchase of an older Mac, eg. Macbook, running Leopard (10.5.8), with which AWks just cruises along.

 

[rlehman77]

I just tested this with some old .cwk files and Pages '09 (v4.3), which still runs in Yosemite. Worked perfectly for text files. This is your quote and my answer is below.

Dear Chas_m: Can you give me some tips on how to put the .cwk files into/on/blended/drag drop or whatever I must do to merge these two documents so I can open them and work with them for my book. Please help. Happy New Year.

 

[rlehman77]

To all who answered my post on .cwk appleworks documents into a workable format. Thanks for your input especially chas_m as I played around with with Pages and found how to convert .cwk to a Pages document with the "open an existing file" and choosing the file to convert. It worked like a charm and now I have my documents to work on. Thanks a million for your support. Happy New Year.

 

[chas_m]

Yay!

Once you've converted the documents to either Pages format or Word (Office) format, you can put the converted files on a USB thumb drive and transfer them to any machine you want. Windows PCs will be able to read Word files (.doc or .docx or .rtf) easily, but only Macs and the web version of Pages can read .pages files.

 

[rlehman77]

Yay is great and the relief to see how easy it is ... is ... Yay, yay, yay. I finally learned something today.

Many thanks chas_m Ron.

 

[JohnnyP]

I just upgraded my iMac to 10.6.8 and see a problem with starting an appleworks drawing.

Format > Rulers > Ruler Settings, it won't let me choose the units or number of divisions. I can still make a drawing, so do I have anything to complain about?

 

[chas_m]

I would strongly STRONGLY advise you to cease making any new drawings in AppleWorks drawing unless you're okay with losing them later. There are not many apps existing now that can open those files (just one that I can think of actually) on a modern computer, and the format will simply not be supported forever (it's not supported at all now! The EazyDraw people had to reverse-engineer it! That format is literally lost code!).

You need to convert all those drawing files over to an Illustrator/vector type standard NOW while you still can. EazyDraw is the only program I'm aware of that still supports AppleWorks' proprietary vector format and can read in those documents. A nine-month license (DO NOT buy the Mac App Store version, it does not support the legacy formats) costs $20 or so, that should be time enough for you to convert the files. If you want to buy a copy, you want EazyDraw 7.01 (the Retro edition), the last to support the antiquated formats you need for AppleWorks drawings.

Seriously, don't wait, unless you want all that effort to be permanently unreadable.

 

[JohnnyP]

Thank you. I am on my way to the EasyDraw site.

 

[JohnnyP]

ok, I bought the nine month license but after using MacDraw and Works for so long, this is too hard to use.

I downloaded the "Contributions" package, thinking I was going to get access to the 40 tutorial videos mentioned. Nope, you have to buy the "Additions" package.

ok, I bought the additions package, will start going through the tutorial vids.

(I just want to draw a block diagram for an electronics project. Lines with arrows, boxes, and some text.)