Is MS Word neccesary with OS 10.2.8?

[Paddy]

Do you have an external floppy drive? That's the $64,000 question!

If you do, then yes, you should be able to open those old Word docs using Word 5.1. However, it would appear possible that AbiWord only supports Word 6.0 and newer - I can't find anything about it on their web site, but have found a couple of very old discussions. The file format for Word 5 and Word 6 are quite different, so it may prove problematic. If you were using OS 10.3.x, you'd be able to open them using TextEdit too, but I don't think the version you have can do it. OS 10.3 is pretty cheap (about $50 from various dealers) - if those Word files are really important, this might be the answer. Might be worth it to send someone running 10.3.9 one of the files via email first though, to make sure it works.

[stripedbass]

Paddy,

Yes, I have an external floppy drive!

[Paddy]

Well, I guess the next step is to try it! Sneakers appears to be the only person still running Word 5.1 around here, so unless he knows of anything that definitely works, I think trial and error may be the best bet.

I was surprised to see that Word 5 is now 15 years old. I guess it may be the version I started with back at the beginning of my Mac-computing career. Ran it on a IIsi which cost more than my G5 or my new MacBook Pro. 25MHz and a whopping 5 MB of RAM. Vroom!!

[stripedbass]

Hi Paddy,

Great idea when you told me to try it.

When I inserted my floppy disk into my external floppy hard drive and then clicked on a Work 5.1 document, TextEdit opend up. And the document would also open up but it would contain some computer formatting gibberish.

In your view, what word processing program would allow you to open Word 5.1 ducuments without any problems?

[krissel]

Text Edit only opened because it is the default text processing application.

You can try opening it in any other text app you may have by dragging and dropping the file on the app icon.

You can either drag and drop the file on the Abi icon or open Abi then go to File/Open and navigate to the file. The former is of course easier. Open Abi, then open the folder that has the files it it. Drag the file you want to open onto the icon of Abi that is in the Dock. It should darken and then open the file.

If you have Appleworks you can upgrade version 6 for free from Apple to work on X and it may open those files also. Appleworks should have been included as mentioned on the CD that came with the iMac. And I repeat my earlier mention of having OS 9 installed so you can run Classic. That would allow you to run Clarisworks 5 which I'm sure would open Word 5 files. That older version of Appleworks came with a large number of translators.

[Paddy]

I might have an older version of something that might open it somewhere around here. I'm going to be getting rid of all the old software as part of the general house-decluttering we're going through in preparation for selling the house and moving, so if you're willing to wait until after Christmas, I'll make sure that I look to see what might do it.