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Hi, is there any OS X word processor out there that would be able to open old WriteNow docs? Just trying to salvage all my really old stuff. Thanks.

Try Appleworks, I think it will do it.

Thanks for the suggestion, but AppleWorks didn't recognize my old WriteNow files. Which is fine with me, since I don't think AppleWorks would run on Intel anyway. Speaking of, I should probably add that as a requirement... "Is there any Universal Binary word processor that would be able to open old WriteNow docs?" Thanks.

OS X for Intel-based Macs will run any PowerPC application. While it might not run as fast as it would on a PPC processor, it will work. Appleworks will run on your Intel-based Mac.

As far as salvaging - if you have access to a Mac that will run WriteNow and can get a hold of an appropriate version of Adobe Acrobat, you could print/export your files as PDFs.

Just found this... looks like it might do exactly what you want. On MacOS X no less.
MacLinkPlus Deluxe File Types Supported: Convert and Decode Windows Files On Your Mac.

I think the best thing to do with WriteNow files is probably to export them as RTF. As for MacLinkPlus, it took a real dive in its later classic incarnations. I didn't know it ever made the jump to OS X. However, back when it briefly shipped with the OS (OS 8 I believe), it was an incredible file translator.

I checked, and while Appleworks 5 supports Writenow (though XTND), Appleworks 6 does not. Appleworks 5 of course only works under Classic.

Well, I guess the best you can do now is to run Writenow inside an emulator and resave the files as something else. The upside is that Writenow was small and light enough to run on a 68k Mac, so an emulator like Basilisk or vMac will be enough to do it,

How many files are we talking? I have WriteNow installed on an old PowerComputing clone. I'd be more than willing to do the conversion for you, as long as we're not talking umpteen hundreds.

FWIW, I loved WriteNow, back in the day.

Thanks for the offer, but I do have Classic running on my machine so I can still open my files in WriteNow. My issue is that when I get a new iMac very soon after Leopard's debut, I would like to open these documents in OS X. Based on what everyone has said, it looks like I have three options:

1) Export to RTF
2) Use MacLinkPlus
3) Open with Acrobat and save as PDF - it doesn't look like I have Acrobat in OS 9, but this method would generate read-only files anyway, so it's probably not that desireable

Which of these options do you think is best? Thanks.

If you want to retain any editability, I'd say export to RTF.

Of course it depends on the complexity of the documents - how much you'd lose - but it seems like going to RTF is the best bet,

Thanks for all the advice so far. So it appears I have over 600 WriteNow documents to convert to RTF. Is there a faster way of doing this other than opening each document, saving as RTF, and adding a .rtf extension to each document? Obviously, WriteNow ain't compatible with Automator! Thanks.

I read online that it shouldn't take too long to write an AppleScript that loops through a specified folder, opens WriteNows docs, and saves them as RTF. Since I have never written an AppleScript before, I do not trust myself, so I would really appreciate it if anyone can get me started... thanks.

Now that Classic is dead in Leopard, I bet a shareware author could really make a nice profit by providing a viewer/converter app for WriteNow files. I can't imagine the files would be too hard to translate.

A nice profit? Do you really suppose there are that many people out there that need to convert old WriteNow files? It sounds like the kind of thing that would get maybe 1 or 2 sales.

Also, to reverse-engineer the format, you'd need to have some way to make WriteNow files, and I'd guess old copies of WriteNow would be fairly hard to come by nowadays.

Sell you mine!

Yeah, it's not too hard to come by. It's such a tiny app, and it's abandon-ware, so. . .

MacLinkPlus, mentioned above, is such a program. I don't use it, but it does claim OS X compatibility.

Something that would be very cool would be a Quicklook plugin that uses the old XTND translators. That way you'd at least get the ability to read many old documents.

Do the XTND translators have PowerPC / 68k / Classic code in them though? If so, such a thing wouldn't be feasible.

Just a note for anyone else that needs to get at text within an old WriteNow document on OSX:

You can use Word 2008 to extract the text (don't know about earlier versions).

To do this from within Word:

1. Choose File menu > Open.
2. Select the file and click Open. Word will then present a small "Convert File" dialog.
3. Choose the intuitively named "Recover Text From Any File" and click OK.
4. Enjoy your gloriously extracted 1997-era text.

The above works on some simple text files I have. I haven't tried it on anything too complicated. Also, it leaves some post-conversion artifacts, but hey, it works.

Wow, great to know.