Home Forums Mac Software Mac Applications How to read a 1993 MS Word document?

I have saved some old Word documents, but I did not save the matching Word application (early 1990s). I'm currently using MS Word 2008. I can't open the old documents with the Word 2008 app, but is there any other way to recover the contents of such an old document?

Have you tried one of the other Word processing apps that are compatible with MS Word .doc and .docx file formats such as, Pages, Nisus Writer, OpenOffice, and NeoOffice?

Thanks for the good idea. I tried it with Pages, but no joy.

I find the situation weird; Microsoft Office applications are usually backwards compatible.
I'm running Office 2011 and can open any .doc/.rtf document I created with Office 98 (my previous suite, from OS 9) and earlier.
Microsoft also has viewers for Word (+ the rest of the suite) available to those who don't want to spring for the suite. It might open your earlier documents.
You might also try getting the document's info (⌘-i) and check to see under Open With if there are options which might solve the problem.

I am like Grelber and assumed MS Office/Word were backward compatible. Apparently I was mistaken. I did some research on MS Office file compatibility (a tip of the hat to Wikipedia) but I do not claim my research is comprehensive. It appears that prior to Mac Office 4 (released sometime in the late 90's) the Mac versions of the MS Office applications did not use the same file format as the Windows versions. It wasn't until the release of Mac Office 4 the Mac version changed to the same file format used in Windows and since that time the files have been interoperable between the two platforms (with exceptions such as the omission of Visual Basic for Applications in the Mac version from Office 2008 until Office 2011). Apparently all of today's Mac apps are based on that common file format and not the older Mac Office 3 and previous format.

Joboy, I found an application called Doxillion that purports to convert a host of different file formats into other file formats for both Windows and the Mac, but I didn't see any obsolete file formats that it purports to support. Dataviz used to have a really great document conversion application called Maclink Plus that probably would have been able to convert your files to a more modern format, but it has been out of print for years. If you could find a copy on someone's dusty back shelves it would probably require a PPC processor to run.

joemikeb & grelber:

Following your suggestion, I was able to open the file with TextEdit, but only a small part of the document was readable. There were many patches of gibberish. In essence, I could identify the document, but couldn't really get anything meaningful out of it. Thanks for the tips. I appreciate it very much.

I have on the shelf in front of me a box containing MacLinkPlus Deluxe v15 on a CD-ROM labeled for MacOS 10.2 or higher. Let's just say I don't throw stuff away very quickly. It was resting on the shelf next to Toast 6 and Microsoft Office 98 Macintosh edition. I might be willing to try MacLink Plus, but I don't dare screw things up installing Microsoft Office 98. One version of Office can't live peacefully with a different version in my experience.

After great effort, I have Mountain Lion 10.8.5 running smoothly and with no hiccups after a traumatic venture into the first version of Mavericks and back again. To fix that one, I was bumped up two levels of Apple tech support that I didn't even know existed, but those wizards were able to get me safely back to 10.8.5 and I'm determined not to mess around and upset my well-greased applecart. I'm at a point in my work where I'm working very hard and cannot afford to have a glitch.