Opening old files

Hi,
I worked on Mac desktops back in 2002-3 and saved files there. I then saved them on an external harddrive.
Now I come to open these documents, the message 'file format invalid' keeps coming up and I can't access the files I need.
Any one know how I can deal with this?
Thanking you in advance
Ashika

Well, that's a bit of a problem.  It's impossible to know what you might be able to open those files with if you don't know what they were created with.  One possibility would be to open the Terminal, type "mdls " (minus the quotes, and include the space at the end), then drag one of these files onto the Terminal window and drop it there to insert the path to that file.  Then hit return, and in the output, look for the value for the item labeled kMDItemFSCreatorCode.  Take that creator code and look for it in a list of creator codes, such as this short list:
http://livecode.byu.edu/helps/file-creatorcodes.php
Or, if you can't find it, try posting back here.

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