CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
2. WORD PROCESSING
3. DRAWING
4. SPREADSHEET, PRESENTATION
&
PAINT
5. DATABASE
6. FILEMAKER PRO
Databases: FileMaker Pro
and Appleworks
FileMaker Pro cannot directly
import AppleWorks databases, so
everything has to be set up from scratch: only the actual
data can be
imported. The process here is the same as elswhere - save
the database
in AppleWorks as ASCII text, and then in FileMaker Pro you
can either
import the file into an existing database, or create a new
database and
choose to create it from the file. Data will be brought
over, of
course, but date and number fields will have to be set, and
calculation
fields will have to have their functions re-entered from
scratch.
The
comments below apply to FileMaker Pro 10; it's now at
version 19 (OSX
10.14 minimum required) and there may be differences in the
process.
Building new layouts is
reasonably easy: the graphical interface is
broadly similar to that of AppleWorks, and by opening an
AppleWorks
database in Layout mode and matching the appearance of the
FileMaker
Pro layout to it it's possible to reproduce most layouts
very closely
(as in the illustration, left).
It's worth taking the time to study the manual, because many
of the
processes are different from in AppleWorks, though for the
most part
they are entirely logical. Confusingly, most keystrokes are
different;
here are some examples:
Function |
AppleWorks |
FileMaker Pro |
New Record or Request |
command-R |
command-N |
Find mode |
command-shift-F |
command-F |
Find and replace |
command-F |
command-shift-F |
Show all records |
command-shift-A |
command-J |
Delete record |
command-X |
command-E |
There is no Save command in FileMaker Pro: it auto-saves
after any
change.
FileMaker Pro offers complex scripting, easily assembled
from inbuilt
script steps: in theory the AppleWorks database module can
be
AppleScripted but in practice it doesn't work.
Though FileMaker Pro provides almost all the facilities
which are in
AppleWorks, there is one surprising omission: you cannot
select
multiple records (highlight a record and hit command-A in
AppleWorks),
nor copy out multiple or single records using command-C. You
can
however use a script to select all visible records and copy
out. Also
you cannot paste records (you can paste into fields but not
records):
in AppleWorks you can select a range of
records in one database (or spreadsheet) and paste them into
another
database (where they will be entered using the current tab
order and
maintaining text formatting). FileMaker does not allow this,
though it
can import records from another FileMaker database (a found
range if
required), and as we have seen, unformatted data from a
plain text file.
In AppleWorks, copying out a range of records maintains all
text
formatting and can be pasted into a Word Processing
document. In
FileMaker Pro, using the 'Select All and Copy' script
maintains text
formatting which has been specifically applied to individual
text
selections, but not that set for that field when the layout
was created
or edited.
Transferring a
complex database from Appleworks to FileMaker Pro is
likely
therefore to involve a good deal of work, but the results
can
be very good and do offer more facilities, particularly in
the area of
scripting with which quite complicated processes can be
easily
automated.
However, it is advisable to be
able to open files with AppleWorks in the first place. If
for any
reason you cannot do this, the only alternative is to open
them in
LibreOffice and extract the data.