Help! Appleworks quits unexpectedly

Question

Everytime I try to open a word or works doc sent by a PC user, my appleworks quits unexpectedly. It used to work...? Any suggestions? I thought this was a PC problem...

Answer 1

HI Jennifer,
Welcome to Apple Discussions and the AppleWorks forum.
AppleWorks 6.2.9 does not include translators for MS Works documents.
The translators included for MS Word and for MS Excel were last revised over three years ago, and will not work with files from the newest versions of Word or Excel as MS has changed the format of these files in that time.
If the PC users are sending you files in older formats, the above paragraph may not apply. The first step to take when AppleWorks has stopped working correctly is to delete the AppleWorks preference files.
You'll find the files at Mac HD > yourname > Library > Preferences.
In that Preferences folder, look for and delete the file com.apple.appleworks.plist
In the same preferences folder, look for the folder AppleWorks. You can delete this whole folder, or open it and delete the enclosed files. NOTE: If you have made changes to AppleWorks's Button Bar, don't delete the Button Bar preferences in this folder—it rarely causes problems, and if you delete it, you'll have to rdo the changes to the Button Bar.
There's more on this in Peggy's post (Linked above).
Although his appears to be a preferences issue, you might also want to clear your Recent Items folder, another maintenance task that helps AppleWorks keep running at full speed. You'll find your Recent Items folder at Mac HD > yourname > Documents > AppleWorks User Data > Starting Points > Recent Items. You can delete all of the items in this folder, or just the older ones. The items are aliases, and deleting them has no effeect on the files to which they point.
Regards,
Barry