[OS8.6] Selecting application that opens a file

[crenz]

A friend of mine is having problems with her old PowerBook running Mac OS 8.6... Netscape sometimes saves .doc files in a way that AppleWorks won't open them. Is there any way I can tell Mac OS which app should be used to open the file, or change the creator/type code or something? The equivalent on OS X would be Apple-I, then select the application, I guess.

 

[blogo]

Tried opening with word?

 

[pncc]

A friend of mine is having problems with her old PowerBook running Mac OS 8.6... Netscape sometimes saves .doc files in a way that AppleWorks won't open them. Is there any way I can tell Mac OS which app should be used to open the file, or change the creator/type code or something? The equivalent on OS X would be Apple-I, then select the application, I guess.

I think there is a Control Panel called PC Exchange. You can set name suffixes to Open in specific Applications.

 

[HexMonkey]

There are several third party applications that let you change the type/creator of a file. My favourite is Snitch, which adds this and other things to the Get Info window. ResEdit from Apple also has a feature to get info for a file and has these options in its get info dialog, but that isn't as quick.

Once you can do that, simply change the creator code of the file. ClarisWorks 4's creator was 'BOBO' I think, I'm not sure about AppleWorks though (to find out, just get info on the application with Snitch installed).

Snitch is available here.

 

[Sparky's]

You can change what Netscape does in the way of saving files in the preferences pane. Also why is "Netscape" saving .doc files? Anyway make sure you locate the file and see if the extension is still .doc, if not then change it and try to open it in Word, that has worked for me in the past. One other thing to try is in Netscape try "Save As" and force it to save it to the app you want.

good luck

PS I still have netscape 4.7 on a Umax clone running OS 8.6 I'll play with it and see if I see anything weird.

 

[wordmunger]

In 8.6 the extension shouldn't matter. Have you tried just dragging the file onto the appleworks icon?

 

[MisterMe]

In 8.6 the extension shouldn't matter. Have you tried just dragging the file onto the appleworks icon?

Not quite true. When you download files, Internet Config assigned TYPE and CREATOR codes according to your MIME settings. Those are determined by the file extensions of non-Mac files.

 

[crenz]

Thanks for all the hints! I can't open it in Word as neither of us has Word. Also, in case you are wondering how we're creating .doc files with Netscape , she's saving attachments from her webmail page. It seems that the webmail server doesn't produce the correct MIME headers all the time, leaving the .doc file with incorrect type/creator settings. Because of that, even dragging onto the AppleWorks icon doesn't work.

 

[HexMonkey]

Thanks for all the hints! I can't open it in Word as neither of us has Word. Also, in case you are wondering how we're creating .doc files with Netscape , she's saving attachments from her webmail page. It seems that the webmail server doesn't produce the correct MIME headers all the time, leaving the .doc file with incorrect type/creator settings. Because of that, even dragging onto the AppleWorks icon doesn't work.

I believe that the correct file type for World documents is 'WDBN'. So use Snitch/ResEdit etc to set this and the creator to 'BOBO' and it should work (of course you don't need to change the creator, you can just drag it to AppleWorks if you don't).

 

[MisterMe]

Thanks for all the hints! I can't open it in Word as neither of us has Word. Also, in case you are wondering how we're creating .doc files with Netscape , she's saving attachments from her webmail page. It seems that the webmail server doesn't produce the correct MIME headers all the time, leaving the .doc file with incorrect type/creator settings. Because of that, even dragging onto the AppleWorks icon doesn't work.

TYPE and CREATOR codes are not generated by the server. MIME settings are generated by the sender. TYPE and CREATOR codes are generator by the recipient. The only thing that the server sees is a bitstream with some routing information.

 

[crenz]

TYPE and CREATOR codes are not generated by the server.

I know. But Netscape seemingly also uses the MIME type to set the TYPE/CREATOR codes of the file. That's why incorrectly configured webservers can give you this problem.