The return of "Whoa, I have a really old file, how do I open it!?"
Reader Karl Lacher is the latest to inquire about very old files that seemingly can’t be opened with a very new Mac. He writes:
Genealogy is my hobby and I have many old Microsoft Word 5 documents stored on my iMac. How can I recover the text from these files with my current copy of Microsoft Office 2011?
As you can probably judge by this article's title, this is well-worn territory. And, regrettably, the path is even less smooth than it once was. But give this a go.
Launch Word 2011 and choose File > Open. Navigate to the document you want access to and click the Open button. With luck, your file will open with something close to its original formatting. (If it doesn’t, make sure you have the latest version of Office—choose Help > Check for Updates.) I tried this with a Word 5 file provided to me by Twitter follower Ben Smith (@benptooey) and it opened without including garbage characters. This is hardly an ideal solution as it requires that you open each file individually, but at least it works, which is more than I can say for some other methods.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
http://www.macworld.com/article/2025389/the-return-of-whoa-i-have-a-really-old-file-how-do-i-open-it-.html
