Appleworks 6.2.7 Document HTML Question

[mrboatbuilder]

Hello:

Was wondering if a Mac Forums user might help me with a problem.

Having lost my G-3 iMac which had Claris Works to a hardware problem I just purchased a G-4 867 Laptop which included OSX Panther and Apple Works 6.2.7.

My question has to do with a problem saving a document as a HTML text document.

In my old program I would creat a nice listing for eBay with my word processor using colored fonts with different sizes etc and then save it. Then I would save it again as an HTML document and get a file that looks like the small sample below, and then then copy and paste it in the description box in eBay (Sample Below):

<P ALIGN=CENTER><FONT SIZE=4><FONT COLOR="#DD0000"><B>***THANKS FOR LOOKING AT MY LISTING***</B></FONT><B></B></FONT><B><FONT SIZE=6><FONT COLOR="#0000DD"><BR>
<BR>
Brand New<BR>
Genuine Leather<BR>
Ballet Slippers<BR>
Tan <BR>
Size L7.0<BR>

The problem that I am having with 6.2.7 is that I make the document, save it down, and then when I save it again as HTML it does not save it in a document, but opens a "Spread Sheet" with the text in the cells, but only part of the text. Most of the sentences are cut off after a few words.

I have gone through all of the help files and have not been able to come up with an answer.

Does anyone know why when what happens, happens. I do not know why when I save a document it opens a spread sheet?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You

Al Gordy
mrboatbuilder

 

[Doctor Q]

Hi Al.

I tried to recreate your problem with AppleWorks 6.2.7. I can type some text with size and color variations, save it as text, open it again, save it as HTML, and open it again, still as HTML. But maybe I'm not doing exactly what you are doing.

Can you provide step-by-step instructions so I can do just what you are doing?

 

[mrboatbuilder]

To Doctor Q

Hi:

Thanks for the offer of Help. I could not sleep and got up to check and see if someone had replied. With your message would seem that I found the solution.

Maybe it will help someone if it ever comes up again.

What I did was transfer the old documents I made with AppleWorks to the new machine. Then I would open them and it would come up and say do you want to open with 6.2.7 and I would tell it yes. Then I would save it in 6.2.7 as a document. The I would open it and save it as HTML and it would openin a spread sheet.

This is what I did a minute ago and it seems to work fine. I opened the document I had upgraded to 6.2.7, then I selected all of the text and pasted it into a NEW 6.2.7 document, named it and saved it. Thwn I opened it and saved it as HTML and sure enough, it came out as HTML Text.

I am not sure why when I went in to an upgraded document and tried to save it as HTML it opened a spread sheet.

I did notice this:

The old document file info says:

balletslipper(v6.0).cwk

When I pasted the text into a new document and saved it it's info says:

balletslipper.cwk

Apparently when I upgraded it put in the (v6.0) in the file name and for some reason that is making the spread sheet open.

UPDATE:

As I was typing this to you I went back and cut the (v6.0) out of the file info of one of the old upgraded documents, saved it, and then opened it again and saved it in HTML and it worked.

It would appear that when you go up from a document from and older version, and I think the one I had was Applworks 2.0, that it puts the (v6.0) in the file name just before the period and it does something funny to the file.

I very much appreciate your help. I have tried to fix this for over a week to no avail. Apparently your email opened my brain.

Al Gordy
mrboatbuilder
Mapleton, Oregon

 

[Doctor Q]

Al,

I'm glad you got past this problem. It was thoughtful of you to followup by posting a description of what you learned, since it may be of benefit to others who run into the same problem.

I agree that the problem probably resulted from the way documents from an older version of AppleWorks were upgraded. I've worked with many versions of ClarisWorks/AppleWorks and they all have their quirks. I don't think the "[v6.0]" in the filename was itself the culprit, but instead other flags in the file that identify the version and format. One of those flags was mistakenly making the program think it had a spreadsheet. The switch from OS 9 to OS X has been a little tricky for AppleWorks because it relied on the type/creator codes in a Mac file to know which type of AppleWorks document it was. Since OS X relies on file extensions as the primary file-typing mechanism, the type/creator codes became secondary.

By the way, you can turn off the feature that adds the "[v6.0]" to converted filenames using the Preferences -> Files -> [v6.0] Suffix checkbox.

Happy Boatbuilding!

Doctor Q