Why hasn't anyone developed an app that can open obsolete files?

[machenryr]

The problem with old OSes and computers. I go back with Mac to the 80s. I still have most of my old drives. I have one or two computers still from back then. I have no idea whether they will still boot. 10 years ago my IIsi still booted. But it seems there would be a market for someone to develop an application or a means of opening old OS files. Or to partition old OSes. Not possible? Does something like this exist? I'd love to open old Word, Appleworks documents, my old Eudora mail program. All lost histories. In the mean time, when I have time, I'll dig out that IIsi and see if it will still boot and figure out a way of salvaging some history.

 

[Bigwaff]

Uh.. there are numerous emulators which can run ancient versions of Mac OS.

Macintosh Emulation Guides [E-Maculation wiki]

www.emaculation.com

Getting at your ancient software data files might be the bigger challenge depending on where they exist.

 

[entropi]

maclink plus deluxe does exactly this!

 

[Bigwaff]

maclink plus deluxe does exactly this!

.. but only runs on PPC Macs :-(

 

[Boyd01]

LibreOffice will open old AppleWorks/Clarisworks files. I used both of those heavily at home and work until around 2000 or so when I switched to MS Office. I can still access my old files though with LibreOffice. Funny, two days ago a friend had the same complaint, about how he had all these old AppleWorks files he couldn't access. Told him about LibreOffice and he was amazed (and delighted)!

I believe it will also open your old Word files.

 

[BrianBaughn]

You can probably find a method to deal with most old file types…but I'm thinking of the piles of money that will roll in if I develop a universal app!

 

[bob_zz123]

You can probably find a method to deal with most old file types…but I'm thinking of the piles of money that will roll in if I develop a universal app!

Well in a sense we already have that in that you can open any "file" in a text editor or hex editor to observe the internal structure of the file. I guess what you mean is a "universal" app that can read and logically display the information in any file type. By definition that's very difficult to do because every file type is different and the internal structure makes sense only to applications that know how to understand it, whether that be proprietary binary, XML with a specific schema or whatever.

You could build an app that understands a large number of file types either by reverse-engineering proprietary files and/or incorporating open standard file types (such as .odt) but that's not really universal, simply an app that knows how to open a large number of different file formats, and would also have to be reguarly maintained to add support for new file types. And even then your application would have the problem of how to display the data from these files, presenting a Word (type) document is different from (say) a photo so there'd have to be a mapping between the file type, the internal logic of how to process the file type and the internal logic of how to present the data. Seems like a big job to have to do that for every file type in existence!

 

[Fishrrman]

Like Boyd mentioned above:
Try LibreOffice.

Download LibreOffice | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft

Download free office suite for Windows, macOS and Linux. Microsoft compatible, based on OpenOffice, and updated regularly.

www.libreoffice.org

Issues that could crop up with old disks/files:
IF the data exists on old floppy disks, and IF the floppy disk is the original Mac 800k or 1.4 disk that requires a Mac-only floppy drive, then you're going to have a problem reading it. The Mac-only drives use a different disk formatting/encoding system than did "DOS" 720k or 1.4?) floppy drives. You'll need an older Mac with an original drive in running condition.

ALSO...
Somewhere along the line (can't remember just when) Apple dropped support for the old HFS format (as distinguished from HFS+). So, on the Mac side you'll need an older Mac running an older version of the OS to access an HFS drive (floppy or otherwise).

Having said this:
Files are "lost with the passage of time" because the user didn't take care to archive/preserve them in a format that would remain accessible over time.

I still have a database created in 1987 that I can access today.
I have emails and documents written in 1987 that I can open today (in fact, they're right here on my 2025 m4 Mini).

As the years have gone by, and the Macs have changed, along with the OS's AND the apps that will run on them, I've migrated important files (such as bank records, tax records, etc.) from one app (such as ClarisWorks) to something more modern, such as Numbers. I just checked and I was able to open a checking account record from 1988 (although in reality I'd very seldom do that, but the files "are there" if need requires).

For long-term archiving, it might help to save files in a universal, "non-machine specific" format. Thinking of ".xls" or "open document" for spreadsheets, rich text for word-processed docs, etc.

 

[NoBoMac]

What @bob_zz123 and @Fishrrman said.

Don't think there is a real market for something like this. "Real" being can make a profit on a program for this.

Companies/organizations that might have deep pockets generally won't bother as costs money re: software, man-hours.

Average Joe/Jane user, they want it free, no subscriptions, not going to pay more than $X. Oh and expect infinite software updates, new formats supported for their minimal/no investment.

Heck, even when they know the format, still can be a pain. Years ago, company I was at updated our PCs to latest version of Office, which "broke" pretty much every template we had, legacy documents (things were shifted, wrong place, fonts got munged, logos off, etc, etc). You'd figure MS would be able to read in their older formats easily, but...

 

[eRondeau]

There are online resources (websites) that claim to open/convert hundreds of different file extensions. Zamzar.com claims to open 1,200 different file types. I’ve used it successfully to translate even ancient Amiga files. As a sidenote, the sheer longevity of .pdf’s and .doc’s and .xls’s amazes me. I recently opened a 300-page .pdf saved on a CD-ROM in 1994 on my M4 Mac and it loaded & displayed perfectly. Truly impressive!

 

[chown33]

... I recently opened a 300-page .pdf saved on a CD-ROM in 1994 on my M4 Mac and it loaded & displayed perfectly. Truly impressive!

One reason for that is the history of PDF.

History of PDF - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Its initial features have been quite stable, and things were mainly added rather than replacing existing things.

 

[Boyd01]

I remember installing the original public beta of Mac OS X on one of our G4 towers, just to get acquainted. I thought one of the coolest things was Quartz, which was (as I understood) based on PDF. It was really amazing that you could "print" any document directly as a PDF. I continue to use that feature to this day.

Going back farther, I got an Apple ][ back in 1978 and actually still have a lot of those files, which (like @Fishrrman ) I have migrated from computer to computer over the years. It really is a lot better to do it that way instead of waiting 20 years and hoping you can find a way to access your old data. But "better late than never", of course.

 

[NoBoMac]

It was really amazing that you could "print" any document directly as a PDF. I continue to use that feature to this day.

This.

If I deem it important (or semi), print it as a PDF and archive it to my array of external drives and cloud accounts.

I cut my teeth in the digital Stone Age where memory/storage was scant and expensive, so was never a digital pack rat: how many emails, for example, do I need to keep from years ago and most without any real info (eg. "I'm landing at 7:00pm on flight 123"). To this day I tend to flush almost all my emails, texts. One text thread is long but it has some value as sharing info on new beverages, cigars that are exchanged between me and brother in law (to make sure I'm not duplicating data exchanges).

Along those lines, I used to work for a company that dealt with storage products and back then they did a study that showed that after a couple of weeks, most data was basically "dead"/inert, so why waste space on your fast/prime/frontline storage for this "old" data. In the case of email, everyone is talking about issue A, in a couple of weeks issue A is done with and moved onto C, D, and E. This type of thing needed to be documented in project documentation that gets archived.

 

[galad]

Just run things on if you don't want to bother installing emulators on your computer: https://infinitemac.org/

 

[Varmann]

As many said here, the challenge is not to open old file formats (but there are of course some exceptions), but to get access to the files themselves. The sensible longterm approach is to continuously move old (valuable) data over to newer formats. The longer it takes the greater the chance for snags to turn up.

There are so many storage formats that have been obsolete for so many years it would be a real challenge to get access to them nowadays. My old dataset from my PhD is still safe. It was original on a "huge" 10 MB Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet from 1987, but has been migrated up through different Lotus versions, dBase-files, Quattro Pro, Excel, Openoffice, Liberoffice, on 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" diskettes, zip drives, CD-disks. Some of my colleagues had their old data on 8" diskettes and punchcards (still used in the 80´s) and I would not dare to think about the challenge to get access to that today.

 

[Fishrrman]

Varmann -

I believe there are companies that specialize in migrating "old data" from old hardware to new formats and new hardware.

Of course, one will pay for the services.

For an individual, the only options are to keep older hardware around, OR (as mentioned above), try to "package" one's data with an eye towards the future (i.e., keeping WP files in pdf format or text/rich text format) ...

 

[machenryr]

Well closing the door after the horses got out is not the solution I was looking for. In 1985 when I got my first Mac+ I wasn't savvy enough to even THINK about backing up or saving in a format I could open in the future. That started occurring to me around 1995 I think. But I only had a PDF Reader at the time. I know better now. But now that the barn has already burned down I'm looking for methods of opening old files.

It seems to me it could be a very profitable program. There are some programs that are continually updated based on user requests. I already know a few music program I'll probably never be able to open without the Mac II or something. But I'd be willing to pay for it.

 

[bogdanw]

"Professor Dene Grigar says some digital art can only be truly experienced on the computers is was originally made for"
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250516-the-people-stuck-using-ancient-windows-computers
Image credit: Grant Hindlsey/ BBC

 

[decafjava]

LibreOffice will open old AppleWorks/Clarisworks files. I used both of those heavily at home and work until around 2000 or so when I switched to MS Office. I can still access my old files though with LibreOffice. Funny, two days ago a friend had the same complaint, about how he had all these old AppleWorks files he couldn't access. Told him about LibreOffice and he was amazed (and delighted)!

I believe it will also open your old Word files.

It does, I have Word files from the late 90s that open with LibreOffice.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"But now that the barn has already burned down I'm looking for methods of opening old files."

How about being a little more specific on the files you have that you'd like to access, and what kind of storage they're located on?

The "solutions" will vary, according to "what you have"...

 

[machenryr]

Sure. The aforementioned Appleworks, but some are more obscure and impossible I'm sure. Hypercard not as obscure. Music programs like Mosaic, and Professional Composer, MOTU's Performer, Opcodes Galaxy, MidiMac and Vision. But also Eudora mail program. I have archived discussions on old BBSes.

 

[chown33]

What format are the Eudora archives stored in? If it's MBOX, then those should be importable directly into a Mac's Mail.app.

It's been ages since I left Eudora, but I'm pretty sure I just exported everything as MBOX and imported it into my Mail.app. That was probably on Mac OS X.1 or something, and it would have been on a G4 PowerPC. It was probably coming from OS 9.something.


Depending on what you intend to do with Hypercard, your best option may be trying to get an old PowerPC Mac running a suitable OS version. The Wikipedia article on Hypercard says:

HyperCard - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

HyperCard runs natively only in the classic Mac OS, but it can still be used in Mac OS X's Classic mode on PowerPC based machines (G5 and earlier). The last functional native HyperCard authoring environment is Classic mode in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) on PowerPC-based machines.

We have a PowerPC forum here, where you might find some more specific info:

PowerPC Macs

Power Mac, PowerBook, iMac Gx, iBook, etc...

forums.macrumors.com