Mac Woes

[Peoplesoft bloke]

What actual problems are you having getting Pages 2 to open the Appleworks docs?

Just saying that it doesn't work isn't giving us a lot to go on

Apologies - that was a bit crap wasn't it? The fantastically friendly Mac error says "the document could not be opened". I have tried opening using file>open and using the recommended method of dragging the file and dropping it on the pages icon. I get the same answer each time.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Get another mac?

I sat here with an iMac, IBook and a Macbook, I don't need any more for now thanks - I just want these ones to work.

[Sysman]

Mac HDs are pure commodity items. I'm almost convinced they buy 'seconds'.

Love the design and OS X but sometimes the stock components like HDDs are a bit crappy.

Mine packed in a couple of years ago, but it was around the same time that the battery was running out of steam. I simply switched over to using external Firewire disks and have used it in "desktop mode" ever since.

[Moscow Mule]

And very nice too - sadly absolutely nothing to do with the issues I'm having, but thanks all the same.

Terribly sorry for trying to be helpful - it looks similar to what you're experiencing.

Have you tried installing appleworks on the macbook?

Secondly, maybe do a search on the apple support forum rather than getting people on a contracting forum to do your ******* googling for you?

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Terribly sorry for trying to be helpful - it looks similar to what you're experiencing.

Have you tried installing appleworks on the macbook?

Secondly, maybe do a search on the apple support forum rather than getting people on a contracting forum to do your ******* googling for you?

OK thanks- maybe my post didn't explain it very well - I have done a shed load of "****** googling" before asking here and I wasn't getting anywhere fast. I have searched all the official and unoffical mac forums I can find before I posted here.

I wasn't asking you to do my googling, I was looking for mac experience as I know there are some Mac users on here.

Yes I have tried installing Appleworks on the macbook - it just hangs - apparently this is because the version I have is incompatible with osX (as I tried to explain in the original post). I need to update to version 6.2.4 or later on the ibook, then copy the whole directory to the macbook - but the update to 6.2.9 fails as it says it cannot find Appleworks on the ibook (even though it is there in the default location) The only other possible reason I can find for this is that I am trying use the US update on an International English installation (or vice versa) but as I have now tried US and International versions of the update and they both fail the same way I am lost.

[Moscow Mule]

Can I (tentatively) suggest you have a look at this -

http://www.panergy-software.com/prod.../features.html

It claims it will open Appleworks files.

If not working on said files is an option, maybe this would be the most expedient rather than trying to screw around with appleworks, especially since you've got a version of iWork now...

[Moscow Mule]

Can I (tentatively) suggest you have a look at this -

http://www.panergy-software.com/prod.../features.html

It claims it will open Appleworks files.

If not working on said files is an option, maybe this would be the most expedient rather than trying to screw around with appleworks, especially since you've got a version of iWork now...

If you don't fancy that, what happens when you run software update on the ibook?

Getting updates immediately (Mac OS X 10.2.8 or earlier)
From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
From the View menu, choose Software Update.
Click Update Now.
In the Software Update window, select the items you want to install, then click Install.
Enter an administrator account name and password.
After the update is complete, restart the computer if a restart is required.
You can repeat these steps to see if more updates are now available. Because some software updates are prerequisites for others, you may need to repeat these steps several times to complete the software update sequence.

[darmstadt]

I know diddley squat about Macs but isn't OSx a Unix based OS so do you have the attributes for the files you wish to open set correctly, perhaps some security settings have changed with the re-install?

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Can I (tentatively) suggest you have a look at this -

http://www.panergy-software.com/prod.../features.html

It claims it will open Appleworks files.

If not working on said files is an option, maybe this would be the most expedient rather than trying to screw around with appleworks, especially since you've got a version of iWork now...

Many thanks - top idea - looks just the job, I'll download it and see if it will help.

[NickFitz]

One thing that springs to mind is the question of how you are copying the Appleworks documents from the older Mac to the newer.

I believe (although I may be wrong) that Appleworks on Mac OS 9 (and below) used the resource fork of the file, which (as you probably know) is a separate stream associated with the file containing important metadata and so forth (similar to alternate streams in NTFS).

If you're transferring by copying to a USB stick or external drive, that will probably be formatted using FAT or FAT32, which will only copy the data fork and lose the resource fork, meaning the file can't be opened.

If this is the case, try attaching a USB drive and formatting it on the old Mac (HFS, I believe, is the necessary format) and copy the files to that using the Finder, then copy them off there onto the new machine. This should ensure that the resource forks also get copied.

There are a few command line utilities on OS X that deal with resource forks correctly; you might be able to use one of them to examine a file and see if this is the case, before starting the above process. Google can probably help you with this more than I can - I no longer have an OS 9 machine to experiment with