Hit: Converting Clarisworks to Access and also MAC to PC

[Paula Neale <PLNeale@AOL.COM>]

Colleagues,

I had requests for a hit on this topic.

First I must apologize because I know I am leaving some responses out of this
hit.  I read my mail from the web while I was out of town and mistakenly
thought the messages would also be in my mailbox when I returned.  I can tell
you that I did not get a definitive step-by-step reply.

Several people recommended a program called Conversion Plus for people
needing to convert MAC programs to PC.  This is not an option for me as we
have a truly Dilbert- like technology department and they would never
consider such a thing.  Their solution is that the only thing to do is start
over.  However Conversion Plus may help some of you.

Here is my original question followed by  the responses I managed to save.
>Does anyone know if it is possible to convert a Clarisworks 4 database to
>Microsoft Access.  If so, do you know in what format to save it.  I know that
>you can save a Clarisworks file as a DIF (I think that's what it's called)
>and it will open right up in Excel but I have some databases that aren't
>suitable for spreadsheets and want to know if Access is a viable conversion
>option.

I am also wanting to convert MAC to PC.

Suggestions:

"What I did was convert it to an Excel file, then import that into
Access.  It might work for you as well.

If Clarisworks can "save as" a comma delimited ASCII text file then just
about any
decent database program can open it, including both Excel and Access.
Sometimes this
will be shown as a "delimited text file." Look carefully because there are
also
'plain text' files that also have a filename extension of .txt

You don't describe what your database is, but Excel can be used as a sort of
database -- it's just not a relational database.

And if your database has fixed-length fields then you can even save it as a
'plain
text' file and work with it in either Excel (where I _know_ this works) or
Access.
Excel will let you set exactly where (what position) each field ends."

End of Suggestions and more comments from me.

I fooled around with this a little while I was in Philadelphia (with my son's
PC) but did not come up an easy answer.  I think it would be possible with a
lot of tweaking.

However as a first step, I know the following will work to get you from a
Clarisworks database to an Excel spreadsheet.

Save your Clarisworks file as a DIF file.  (I have Clarisworks 4.)

Open Excel and then open the DIF file.  Excel will copy your fields into
columns in the same order you originally defined them.  It doesn't matter
what layout you have on the screen.  It will copy as originally defined.  It
will not copy the headers but it's a simple matter to put them in.  If I
actually decide to undertake this project, I will probably start with this
step.  If I email the MAC excel file to my PC workstation at school, then the
MAC to PC  issue would be resolved and I would be ready to read up and try to
get the excel file into ACCESS.

By the way I also tried the above process saving the Clarisworks file as text
and got essentially the same results but before Excel converted the file, I
was asked some questions  about delimited text that I really did not know how
to answer.

Hope this helps.

Paula Neale
LMC Ingels Elementary School
Kansas City, MO.
plneale@aol.com

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