Opening AppleWorks and ClarisWorks (.cwk) in OpenOffice.org

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teddy
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Opening AppleWorks and ClarisWorks (.cwk) in OpenOffice.org

Post by teddy »

For us Mac users it would be very helpful if it was possible to open AppleWorks/ClarisWorks files in OOo. (The program changed name.) There are many possibilities to open and save in different formats in OOo, but it seems none of the most popular Mac formats are there. MS Word for Mac was a different format than on Windows quite long (I think untill Office 98), and Claris MacWrite II and Pro was very popular on the Mac for many years. And Claris FileMaker (Pro) for databases. But the most important one is ClarisWorks/AppleWorks, wich allmost everybody used (since it used to be shipped with the computers) untill very recently. The text documents, as well as the spreadsheat, database and graphics documents would be very sensible to be able to open in OOo.

The problem now is that AppleWorks only excists in one version with updates for OS X before it was discontinued, so those of us that didn't change to OS X fast enough never had it. Since newer Intel Macs can no longer run older apps (so called "Classic" MacOS 7-9.2 programs) there is no possibility to read these old files with the older versions of AppleWorks or ClarisWorks they were made with either. So then the only possibility is to buy MS Office, iWorks or go pirate and get hold of AppleWorks 6.x.x. I would love to avoid those options...
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ccornell
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Re: opening appleworks and clarisworks (.cwk) in openoffice

Post by ccornell »

StarOffice8 can open .CWK documents. This is part of the W4W proprietary filter. So.. technically it is possible already.

You can get StarOffice as part of GooglePack http://pack.google.com/intl/en/pack_ins ... l=en&gl=us but... it's only part of the Windows Pack... it's not included in the Google apps for Mac.

So... a possible solution is to install StarOffice from Google Pack on a Windows PC, import all the CWK documents you have, and save as ODF. It would be a one time conversion, and then you'd be able to work on your old documents.
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mroberts2002
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Re: opening appleworks and clarisworks (.cwk) in openoffice

Post by mroberts2002 »

Hi- I just tried your suggestion but the document but the document is unreadable:

##á#BOBO##¬############,Aà#######d#$#H#H#H#$#H#Ð#################################,BÈ######ÿÿ###############H#############,BÀ###########################################################################################################################�####
I'm virtually illiterate when it comes to computers so if you have any suggestion that a neophyte could handle I'd be grateful. thx
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thomasjk
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Re: opening appleworks and clarisworks (.cwk) in openoffice

Post by thomasjk »

Does your application offer you the Option to Save in a different format such as .doc, .xls., dbf? If so then these formats can be read by OOo. This article from Microsoft may help http://support.microsoft.com/kb/139793.
This Google search offers some links that may help http://www.google.com/search?q=clariswo ... US269&aq=t.
Tom K.
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mroberts2002
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Re: opening appleworks and clarisworks (.cwk) in openoffice

Post by mroberts2002 »

Thanks for the quick response. Excuse my confusion - I am trying to open a letter attached to an email from a job I have coming up. It's at a school so of course they have MACs which I have no experience with. It wouldn't open at all until I got Star Office installed and I did save the file as .odt. I tried a few choices to save documents with.doc extensions but the results were the same. When I looked at the articles you suggested I seemed to need to have Claris Works on my computer to make the changes. I'm really quite confused. Is there something I'm missing? Thanks again'.

I was just thinking - do I have to ask the school administrator to save the letter with one of the extensions you mentioned and resend it to me? If that is what is needed I could a least try that if there are future communications to deal with
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kabing
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Re: opening appleworks and clarisworks (.cwk) in openoffice

Post by kabing »

For Mac users, another option is to purchase MacLinkPlus, which can convert Claris Works/AppleWorks documents into formats readable by other programs.

mroberts2002: Yes, your best bet is to ask the school administrator to save the file as and MSWord or rtf document. If they are using OS X, they may also be able to save as pdf by using the Print to PDF command.

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paultry
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Re: Opening Appleworks and Clarisworks (.cwk) in OpenOffice

Post by paultry »

I downloaded and installed StarOffice8 (Windows XP) yesterday, but was NOT able to open .cwk files from the backup disk of my now dead Apple iBook. I then found and downloaded ConversionPlus at http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/D ... d-850.html, and was able to convert all of my otherwise inaccessible .cwk files to .doc and .xls files. This program offers a full function 15 day free demo mode.
fridrich
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Re: Opening AppleWorks and ClarisWorks (.cwk) in OpenOffice.

Post by fridrich »

In LibreOffice 4.1 opening of Claris Works and other legacy Mac formats will be possible in version 4.1. More information in this blog: http://fridrich.blogspot.com/2013/06/li ... egacy.html.
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SimonBerlin
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Re: Opening AppleWorks and ClarisWorks (.cwk) in OpenOffice.

Post by SimonBerlin »

It is quite easy, if you follow these steps and are willing to scroll through some gibberish in the first few pages of your opened document.

Open open office
select open file
select your claris works .cwk file
When open office gives you an dialog window about the ASCII Filter Option, don't just ignore it, try a few of the options of HOW to open the .cwk doc.
I chose western Europe (Apple Macintosh)

and it opened th .CWK file with a gibberish, but on the 4th page or so, the original text of the claris work doc started and the entire document was there. Clean.
Select the clean text.
Copy and paste in to a new open office or word document
Done.

Enjoy.
Simon Veredon
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John_Ha
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Re: Opening AppleWorks and ClarisWorks (.cwk) in OpenOffice.

Post by John_Ha »

If you google convert cwk you get over 200,000 hits suggesting something might be found ...
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Kim57
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Re: Opening AppleWorks and ClarisWorks (.cwk) in OpenOffice.

Post by Kim57 »

I got a clean conversion of a big, complicated Appleworks SPREADSHEET with the following procedure (Appleworks 6.2.9 - final version; Macintosh OS X Snow Leopard):
1) Opened spreadsheet with Apple's "Numbers 09" application (version 2.0.5).
2) Did a "Save as" to "Excel Document"
3) I found that the resulting Excel spreadsheet could be opened with OpenOffice 4.0.1. I haven't yet checked every last detail, but everything seems to be there, including formulas.
I hope this will help someone!
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vic165
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Re: Opening AppleWorks and ClarisWorks (.cwk) in OpenOffice.

Post by vic165 »

I can vouch for the method given by SimonBerlin if you need to open old .cwk files.

Thanks.
Vic
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John_Ha
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Re: Opening AppleWorks and ClarisWorks (.cwk) in OpenOffice.

Post by John_Ha »

It is always worth looking to see if you can buy a copy of an obsolete program which will allow to save in a different, more modern format, which can then be converted to .odt.

For example, you can currently buy Appleworks 6 for Mac from ebay.co.uk for $23 - see Appleworks 6 for Mac - which says:
Do you have old Claris and Clariswork files that you cannot open and thought were lost to you forever? Fret no more! Only this version, 6.2.4 of Appleworks will bring them back from the dead. You can open and work with old Clarisworks files and save them as Appleworks files.
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lgusaas
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Re: Opening AppleWorks and ClarisWorks (.cwk) in OpenOffice.

Post by lgusaas »

John_Ha wrote:It is always worth looking to see if you can buy a copy of an obsolete program which will allow to save in a different, more modern format, which can then be converted to .odt.

For example, you can currently buy Appleworks 6 for Mac from ebay.co.uk for $23 - ...
AppleWorks will not run on any versions of Mac OS X later than ver.10.6.8 (Snow Leopard), the last version to include Rosetta which is required to read the obsolete PowerPC code that Appleworks is written in.

With the advent of system 10.7 ("Lion"), AppleWorks is no longer supported by the Macintosh operating system.[16] AppleWorks word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation files can be opened in the iWork applications Pages, Numbers, and Keynote respectively. There is no Apple-supplied application to open AppleWorks database, painting, or drawing files without converting them to a different format
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John_Ha
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Re: Opening AppleWorks and ClarisWorks (.cwk) in OpenOffice.

Post by John_Ha »

lgusaas wrote:AppleWorks will not run on any versions of Mac OS X later than ver.10.6.8 (Snow Leopard)
That does surprise me as I thought Apple was better than that.

I am still running a 1988 DOS personal finances program, and a Windows 95 version of Lotus 123, Wordpro and Approach under Windows 7.
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See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.

Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
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