Upgrade -- but only a little?

[Em-Ess]

I have an old (old, huh, 10 years, just a child but tell that to the money-grubbers who run the computer world!) desktop with a 10.6.8 OS and lots of files using Word 2008. I would like to upgrade the OS but then my old version of Word won’t work. Is there a way to upgrade to a later OS but not Mojave so I can still access my old Word files?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

Most people covert computer age to human years by multiplying by 12. Thus, a 10 yeard old computer would be the euivalent of 120 human years. Not quite a child any longer.

-What is the exact model of the Mac?
-You can go from Snow Leopard to El Capitan if your Mac is a supported model: How to upgrade to OS X El Capitan
-Microsoft Office 2008 has issues with El Capitan however, as it is even older than your Mac. There are workarounds, but they aren't guaranteed to work for everyone.
-Apple Pages can open/save Microsoft Word documents. Some formatting may not convert, but most can.

NOTE: It is always recommended to have a current Time Machine or other backup of your data, especially if upgrading the OS.

Hope that helps,

C

 

[Em-Ess]

Hello,

Most people covert computer age to human years by multiplying by 12. Thus, a 10 yeard old computer would be the euivalent of 120 human years. Not quite a child any longer.

-What is the exact model of the Mac?
-You can go from Snow Leopard to El Capitan if your Mac is a supported model: How to upgrade to OS X El Capitan
-Microsoft Office 2008 has issues with El Capitan however, as it is even older than your Mac. There are workarounds, but they aren't guaranteed to work for everyone.
-Apple Pages can open/save Microsoft Word documents. Some formatting may not convert, but most can.

NOTE: It is always recommended to have a current Time Machine or other backup of your data, especially if upgrading the OS.

Hope that helps,

C

Thanks, Cory: helpful as always. I will check out the link you suggest; I think my desktop will work.
-A small correction. Pages, awful program that it is, does not open Word documents. When I'm moving stuff from my 120-year-old desktop to my current laptop I have to use TextEdit as an intermediary. TextEdit will open a Word file, then I have to copy it and paste into Pages. Ugh!

 

[Cory Cooper]

No worries.

Not sure why your copy of Pages doesn't open Word documents. What version are you running?

Document compatibility with Microsoft Office

C

 

[Em-Ess]

Pages is 8.0. Whenever I have tried to open a Word file I get this error message:

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hmmm...that is strange.

Are the Word documents saved as .doc or .docx?

C

 

[Em-Ess]

Not sure about all of them but I believe docx. At least that's what I could find out about some.

 

[Cory Cooper]

That makes no sense. I haven't seen that issue since way back in Pages 3-4.

-Are using the Open dialog in Pages 8?
-Have you tried right-clicking the file and choosing Open With > Pages?
-Try creating a document in Pages, then use File > Export to > Word. Open it in Word, make a change, resave. Then see if Pages will open it.

C

 

[Em-Ess]

Thank you for your continued interest and help.
However:
1. I don’t know what “Open Dialogue” is. It doesn’t show in Pages Preferences nor in “Help” — in Pages or in Finder.
2. Right-clicking (control-click) gets me the same error message I cited earlier.
3. I am able to export a Pages document to Word (.docx) and after making a change Pages will open it. But the exported document is still a Pages document. This laptop does not have Word installed: I tried to install my 2008 version but the disk was rejected.

 

[Em-Ess]

Upon reflection I realize that I need to explain. The Word documents on this computer are imported via my cloud backup system from my old desktop computer.

 

[Cory Cooper]

OK, thanks.

1. Open dialog is in Pages, click File > Open.... from menu bar.
3. If you export it as a Word document, then it should have a .docx extension and be a Word document. If you open it again, Pages may convert it again, in which it would have a .pages extension, probably hidden.

-Can you explain the cloud backup system from your old desktop computer a bit further?
-Was it a PC or Mac?
-Do the files show the file type extension - filename.doc or filename.docx, or is it hidden?

C

 

[Em-Ess]

Sorry, Cory, maybe something weird is going on, but the exported document shows up as a Pages document, both in the finder and in Info. However, just for the hell of it, I exported the export and this time it became a Word .docx document. And Pages was able to open that document. I don’t know what this means for opening un-exported Word documents, though.

About open dialogue: It does not appear as you suggested in my Pages File>Open menu.

I am at our country house and the desktop computer — a mac— is home in New York City. I use Elephant Drive as a cloud backup for both that and the laptop I have with me. So I copied some files I need here onto the laptop. I’m not sure now whether there is an extension and what it would be. On this computer no extension shows. As I noted earlier, the only way I was able to use those documents was to use TextEdit as a translator. I love my desktop — nice 27-inch monitor, terabyte memory, etc. but the old OS is beginning to bother me. Things like browsers and my password manager need a later OS. That’s what led to my initial question. I have a million documents in that old Word version and would really - REALLY — need to be able to continue to access them.

 

[Cory Cooper]

The Open Dialog is simply this - it's the window that opens when you use File > Open:

You will either see the file extension if it is not hidden:

Or you won't if it is hidden:

You can right-click on the file and choose Get Info. That will open a window that shows information about the file. In the Name & Extension section, there is a checkbox to hide/unhide the document's extension:

Just trying to get as much information as possible to diagnose the issue.

I wonder if ElephantDrive may be doing something to the file? If the extension is hidden, maybe try unhiding it and see if the issue persists?

C

 

[MightyGem]

Most people covert computer age to human years by multiplying by 12.

In that case, my Minis are 156 and 168 years old.

 

[Em-Ess]

Cory:

I’m getting more and more befuddled. Using the “Open” menu item (dialogue?doesn’t say dialogue) is no help because the Word documents are greyed out. Nothing about the document is shown. Getting Information (Command i is quicker) shows no extension and there is no way to unhide it. Clicking the “Hide” box is not possible because it too is greyed out. The only program to open the document, according to the Information box, is TextEdit.

As for Elephant Drive, I will query them tomorrow (probably tech support is not open on Sunday) but I can’t imagine that they do anything to the millions of files they must process.

 

[Cory Cooper]

You won't see dialog written - a dialog box is the window that opens when you use file menu itmes like Open, Save, etc. That is the ogfficial Apple name for those windows. Also, when you print something, the Print dialog box/window opens. Does that help? Don't worry about the dialog box thing, I was only asking if you tried File > Open...guess I confused you.

We may be onto something there: If Get Info doesn't show an extension, then that may be why it is defaulting to TextEdit. Maybe somewhere along the line the extension/file type got stripped, and it isn't identifying as a Word document. You could try changing the name of one of the files by adding .docx or .doc to the end of the file name. Then see if Pages will recognize and open it.

C

 

[Cory Cooper]

Also, try downloading the attached Test.zip file, double-click to extract it, then try to open the Test.docx file.

Let me know how that goes.

C

 

[Em-Ess]

You did it, Cory. Pages opened both your test document I downloaded and the Word document, to which I added a docx extension. So that's the secret. Now I will play with the idea of upgrading the OS.

Thank you so much.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Excellent! Glad we found a solution.

Let us know if you have additional questions/issues.

Be well,

C