Converting an **OLD** WordStar File
Linc
Does anyone have any ideas about converting a very old
WordStar document? It's from the mid-80s(!). (Mother's
Day present, hopefully.)
None of the filters that come with Word 2000 do a very
good job.
Thanks.
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
A WordStar document of that vintage would have had control codes inserted
inline with the text for underlining etc. and in those days, I don't think
that Wordprocessing programs knew what fonts were, they were a printer
thing.
Have you tried opening it in notepad?
Alternatively, opening it with the Recover text from any file might be the
best option, but you would have to do some cleaning up.
If you want to email me a copy of the document, I'll play around and see
what seems to be best and whether it would be possible to automate the
cleaning up process.
Please respond to the newsgroups for the benefit of others who may be
interested.
Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"Linc" <s890...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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benn...@earthlink.net
in Word. We had to do this with old WordPerfect files.
>.
>
Linc
Thanks for this.
Yeah - I've tried all the obvious things (NotePad, Word
using every conversion filter and WordPad). The recover
text option isn't coming up for me (?). Saving as a text
file makes the problem worse!
WordPad is giving the best results, but for some parts of
the document it still becomes pretty unintelligible.
I've also downloaded some old conversion files for the
programs that WordStar seems to have evolved into, but
without any luck.
Copy of sample file in the mail.
Thanks again for your suggestions.
Linc
>.
>
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
The file that you sent to me appears identical when I open it in Word,
Wordpad and Notepad.
As you noted, most of the document is OK with the exception of a number of
character substitutions that appear to have been made. In addition, the
underlining in the original has not come across properly.
It would be a fairly simple matter to create a macro that replaced the
subsititute characters with the original ones and to recreate the
underlining.
Assuming that the substitutions are uniform from one file to the next, you
could modify the code in
the article "How to Find & ReplaceAll on a Batch of Documents in the Same
Folder" at:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/MacrosVBA/BatchFR.htm
to fix up all of the files that you placed in the one folder.
Please respond to the newsgroups for the benefit of others who may be
interested.
Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"Linc" <s890...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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Linc
Thanks for having a look at the file, anyway.
Unfortunately, in parts it isn't clear what it is that
needs to be replaced. But mum should be still be wrapped
to get the files back.
Linc
>.
>
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
You might also take a look at
http://www.wordstar.org/wordstar/pages/convert_faq.htm
and
http://www.microtech.com.au/habit/wsconvrm.htm
They are just a couple of the more promising ones from a search using Google
for Wordstar converter
Please respond to the newsgroups for the benefit of others who may be
interested.
Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"Linc" <s890...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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