Opening AppleWorks Drawing docs in Pages

One of the frustrations some Pages users have expressed is not being able to open AppleWorks drawing docs. I've discovered a way to open AppleWorks drawings in Pages and keep the drawings editable. (The document has to be from a recent enough version of AppleWorks, 6.2.4 or 6.2.9.) It is basically just a matter of copying and pasting the drawing objects into an AW word processing document in the proper way, saving, then opening the doc in Pages.
To do this use the following procedure: Open the drawing document in AppleWorks, use "Select all" and then copy the selection. Now open a new Word Processor document in AppleWorks. If you don't have the tools palette visible, select Show Tools from the Window menu. Now click on the arrow pointer toward the top of the tool palette. (This deactivates the insert text cursor from the WP doc you just created. If you don't do this step your drawing objects will be pasted as a single uneditable graphic.)
Now do the Paste command and everything from your Drawing document is pasted into the WP doc, but still as a collection of individual drawing objects. Now save this document with whatever name you want. Then open the resulting document in Pages. It WILL open and all the drawing objects are still editable. I even found that you can still ungroup objects that were grouped in AW.
I doubt this is a perfect solution, but I was pleasantly surprised to see it work as well as it did in my limited testing.

Unfortunately, this is the only way to get those AppleWorks draw documents into Pages. I believe I described much the same process three years ago when Pages 1/iWork '05 was released. Back then, I don't think text boxes remained editable, but they do in Pages 2 & 3. Links between text boxes may be lost, but they are easily recreated in Pages.
I think that page layout mode in Pages 3 is very similar to AppleWorks draw & am surprised that this function doesn't exist. It's something I've left feedback for the Pages team about more than once.

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How can I open AppleWorks 6 files using Pages or Word?

I am currently running Mac OS X v.10.4.11, but I am turning in my old mac for a new one in about a week. Almost all of my important files are AppleWorks 6 files and my new mac will not have this program since it has been replaced with Pages. I currently have AppleWorks 6, Microsoft Word 2004 for Mac, and Pages 08 on my old mac. I am unsure as to what applications I will have on my new mac (I am a teacher and the macs are school computers so I do not have control over the software), but I think it will have both Word 2008 and Pages 08 or 09. So far I have not had any luck opening my AppleWorks files in Pages or Word. I have been able to copy and paste the AppleWorks files into Pages (they are mostly Draw documents, not simple word processing), but they become an image so I cannot edit the content. I need to be able to edit my documents on my new computer and do not have time to open each AppleWorks file and copy it to Pages anyway. Any suggestions to help me with this compatibility problem?

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I have written a detailed article going into the process of migrating from Appleworks, including the workaround for Draw>Pages:
http://www.wilmut.org.uk/aw

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Since I installed Snow Leopard, I've encountered two major problems:
(Problem 1) AppleWorks gets corrupted when dragging a picture file (.jpg or .png) from the desktop into a drawing document. Various dialogs (e.g. "Format : Document..." or "Format : Ruler : Settings ..." or "Options : Object Size ...") become uneditable. These dialogs will display blank boxes instead of the given object settings, and nothing can be entered into these boxes. AppleWorks must be shut down and restarted in order to continue work.
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p.s.
I've produced thousands of work sheets for my Maths teachings using the Drawing module of AppleWorks in combination with MathType (Design Science). Now I'm stuck since there is no decent successor of AppleWorks available:
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Welcome to Apple Discussions
I don't use AppleWorks as much as I used to & I've never had a need to use MathType, but I just tried dragging 3 images - a .png, a .tiff & a .jpg - to a new AppleWorks draw document. I had no problems resizing them using Format > Scale by percent & I had no problems using any of the other dialog boxes you mention.
Some basic troubleshooting you might try:
Whenever you do an update, it's a good idea to do two maintenance tasks, one for the system (Repair Permissions) and one for AppleWorks (delete preferences). (Thanks to Barry for this way to format this very common answer.)
To Repair permissions in 10.4.x, launch Disk Utility, found in the Utilities folder in your Applications folder, click on First Aid, then on Repair Permissions.
To delete AppleWorks’ preference files, go to HD > Users > Library > Preferences. Find and delete the file com.apple.appleworks.plist. Find and open the folder AppleWorks in this Preferences folder, then delete all of the enclosed files (with the exception of the Button Bar Preferences if you have customized the Button Bars). AppleWorks will recreate the preference files as it needs them. You should do this step anytime AppleWorks crashes or you force quit it.
The slowness is likely the "Recent Items bug" & it has been around since AppleWorks 6 was released in March, 2000. It can make it appear that AppleWorks has frozen or failed to launch. The user tip by Dale Gillard, AppleWorks slow? Spinning ball appears?, explains a lot.
Could you send me a copy of one of these worksheets? Perhaps I can see if I can easily duplicate one in Pages/Numbers/Keynote. Even though iWork doesn't have a draw app, all of the apps do have basic drawing capabilities.

Can't open Apple Works docs in Pages

Strange, but: The 1st day I used Pages I could open Apple Works and Word docs
just fine. The 2nd day trying to open Apple Works docs resulted in
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To save as a "newer" AppleWorks file (i.e. AppleWorks 6 file format), you'll need to have AppleWorks 6, which will open older file formats from version 5 and then give you the option to save the as version 6 files.
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Oh, one other improvement- it DOES run faster, but then of course it would since it's so much more lightweight.

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jgcabman wrote:
How can I open an appleworks drawing document in lion?
http://www.eazydraw.com/support.htm
Good Luck
Pete

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Welcome to Apple Discussions
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Opening AppleWorks Drawing docs in Pages

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