Ancient Word files

[Andrew Brown]

What is worse than a current Word file ? an old Word file...

I have inherited scores last opened in 1995, described by OS X as
"Word 1.x-5.x". As one might expect, Word Mac 2011 collapses when it
tries to open them. Nisus Writer Pro 1.4.1 can open them, but the
coding is awry and the italics are lost. Pages refuses to touch them.

Any suggestions ? I'm on Mac but I do know people with PCs...

AB

[John Jason Jordan]

On Wed, 15 Jun 2011 07:04:11 +0200
Andrew Brown <li...@c18.net> dijo:

Openoffice.org (free) is pretty good about opening Word files,
especially older Word files. In fact, if OOo can't open them, there's
likely something wrong with the files. If they open correctly in OOo
you can re-save in Word format for importing into ID, or just copy and
paste into ID.

[Roy McCoy]

You don't say you've tried opening the files with an intermediate version of Word. Do you have one, or access to one? If you know people with PCs, can you ask them to try opening and resaving?

Roy

[William Adams]

If you're still waiting for OpenOffice (or NeoOffice) to download, you could try TextEdit.app --- resave as a .rtf, then try Word.

William

--
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.

[Jules Siegel]

Send me one of them. I have Ventura Publisher, which opens and converts all
kinds of legacy word processing files.

--
JULES SIEGEL http://www.moronia.us/
"If it ain't fixed, don't broke it."

Newsroom-l, news and issues for journalists
http://www.newsroom-l.net/

[Robert Severn]

MacLink Translators ma be able to help. (Dataviz)

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Bob

Robert K Severn
Severn Associates
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rse...@severnet.com

"Make a deal with the devil, and you're the junior partner"
Dick Armey

[Andrew Brown]

On 15 Jun 2011, at 14:30, Robert Severn wrote:

> MacLink Translators ma be able to help. (Dataviz)

Yes, I used to use that often, but guess it never made the leap from 9
to X, at all events it is now discontinued. Datviz seems to offer it
for download in exchange for what it calls "Download Insurance" at
$2.99, I could just about manage that but assume it won't work if I do
download it -- see, for example, the discussion at http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=34419

William's suggestion of TextEdit works fine for the coding, but not
for the italics, alas.

And Openoffice suggested by JJJ will open some of the files, but
inadequately, while reporting that others, sitting there on the disk,
do not exist.

I think I'll have to bury this project 6 feet deep, the copyright
holder is in any case being difficult about terms for a new edition.
An interesting glimpse of the problems haunting archivists, trying to
make sense of the disk drives of deceased authors...

AB

[Valter Viglietti - Frame Studio]

Il giorno 15-06-2011 17:49, Andrew Brown ha scritto:

> I think I'll have to bury this project 6 feet deep, the copyright
> holder is in any case being difficult about terms for a new edition.

How many files are there?
You could find a buddy still having OS9/Classic capabilities, able to run
Word 5.1 (I do) and willing to convert all of your files for free or for
some bucks.

Unless there are thousands of files, that should be easy enough.

[Roy McCoy]

Valter wrote:

> You could find a buddy still having OS9/Classic capabilities, able to run
> Word 5.1 (I do) and willing to convert all of your files for free or for
> some bucks.

Precisely. He seems to have ignored the suggestion regarding earlier
versions of Word.

> Unless there are thousands of files, that should be easy enough.

He said scores, and the conversion could be batch automated in any event.

Roy