Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Converting pictures on old ClarisWorks 5 files esp. painting

Aug 11, 2008 6:53PM PDT

We have a lot of old ClarisWorks5 files on which we have not just text but photos. Unfortunately Apple did not provide with their Pages application a way of opening these, only providing conversion support for more recent AppleWorks files. TextEdit will read the text only, but cannot restore the pics. Our newish computer is an Intel iMac running OSX.4.11.
After 18 months I discovered by trial and error that dropping the files on a Office 2004 for Mac Word symbol in the dock will open a lot of these files and restore the photos within the text! Good for Bill Gates, finally providing a key service for Mac files that Jobs has refused to do! Hats off to him!

But there remains a problem. When the ClarisWorks files come from its Art/painting programme with its pages that are considerably wider than a Word page, Word is unable to show the photos, showing only the code, not the images. The situation is further complicated by the fact that many of these CW files have a picture that is formed from multiple pieces of map in photo form, laid edge to edge to form a large map.
And Pages has not produced any equivalent of the CW drawing/painting formats at all.
Has anyone on the Forums any experience in tackling such a conversion problem?
Perhaps as a start it would be useful to know what drawing/art applications with a wide surface exist for modern Macs with X.4? They might be of help in a solution. Thanks!

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
ClarisWorks
Aug 11, 2008 9:55PM PDT

You could try making the size of the page in Word, larger than it currently is. I presume, by your spelling, that your default size is A4.
Try opening Word, going to page setup, changing the paper size to the largest size available, setting orientation to Landscape and then opening the required Clarisworks file from the File/Open menu.

You could take a look at Graphic Converter which may be able to open the graphic portions of your problem.

ClarisWorks went away many years ago BUT, Appleworks 6 will still run on an Intel Mac and will continue to show your legacy files for many years.

So Jobs did provide a way for you to look at your old files after all. And here's you bad mouthing him for nothing. Happy

P

- Collapse -
Word no, but which AppleWorks 6?
Aug 12, 2008 12:39AM PDT

Thanks for your prompt reply: I selected Landscape and US long, but the problem is that when one used the Open command, the old CW files are in grey and Word refuses to select them. With the drag and drop technique onto the Word symbol in the dock, the Word programme offers a selection of about 10 possible conversions, none of which gives anything more than graphics code, the only two for Apple being Appleworks 5 or 6, so no CW. But with the CW straight text files, it opened them without passing by this multiple choice menu.
AppleWorks 6 is still sold by a firm, Hardcore Mac, but my enquiries show they do not ship to Germany. It would have to be an earlier version of AW6 to open CW4, possibly 6.24, but would that function on a MacIntel. Does Rosetta exist on MacIntel iMacs (autumn 06) and would it run it? eBay looks the only hope?

- Collapse -
Clarisworks, Appleworks!
Aug 12, 2008 9:06AM PDT

It is basically all the same.

I am running Appleworks 6.2.7 on an Intel iMac and it works well. The trick is to get it to install.

You will have to do a little tweaking to get it onto your machine but it is possible to extract the files from the installer and manually place them where they need to be.
The installer does not function on an Intel Mac but the program, once placed on the HD, does.

Yes, Rosetta does exist, but you do not need it.

You can make Word open the CW files, not the pictures though, if you choose File > Open and choose, Any document or File type (words to that effect) and you will see that your CW files become ungreyed.

Post back if you get stuck.

P

- Collapse -
tweaking, finding where stuff goes
Aug 12, 2008 8:10PM PDT

Tweaking on OSX is not the forte of the average Mac user, or of myself, I fear! Is there much of a problem opening the installer contents? And how then does one know where to put the pieces? Presumably not just in a standard applications file? And if one needs access to the guts of the machine, Apple has closed them off in case we should play with them. I have never even been able to access the cache on Safari to see what is in it! How does one get around this interdict?
Sorry to sound so dumb, but I am no techie, although I was able to look after earlier machine systems okay, to which one had access.

- Collapse -
Tweaking, in this case, is most definitely within your realm
Aug 12, 2008 9:51PM PDT

If you can follow instructions, are capable of dragging and dropping files and know where you home folder is, you can do this.
ALL the locations that require some portion of Appleworks to be installed are accessible.

Appleworks is a standard applications file that lives in the Applications folder. Other stuff lives in the Applications support folder.
I'll let you guess where the Fonts live. Happy

When you get the Appleworks CD, email my profile and I'll send you directions on how to install the app.

P

- Collapse -
Thanks for clarifying
Aug 13, 2008 12:35AM PDT

I will do so. Thanks!