Posted on 08/22/2004 6:15:43 PM PDT by Robert A Cook PE
Her school (finally!) upgraded to MSOffice 2000 (yes - I know that's not the most recent, but ya take what ya can get ...)
Therefore, my wife is (finally!) upgrading from her veeeeeeeerrrrrry old MSWord 5.0 documents (lessaon plans, tests, and handouts) on our home PC to the MS2000 format so she can share lesson plans and powerpoint presentations on the school's displays.
But, since she teaches AP and college prep chemistry, and had previously been using Word to replace her chemical formula shortcuts to formatted chemical formulas, how can she upload/convert those (hundreds) of chemical formulas now in MSWord 5.0 format to the newer MSWord 2000/XP "Autotext" files?
8<)
A Google search had several conversions for MSWord 5 to MSWord 2000 and WordXP, but none matched this specific problem of formatting autotext "en masse" (since almost all chemical formulas require subscripts, (and some require superscripts)).
When I try to edit a revised autotext file directly - (for example, trying to cut-n-paste using Notepad.exe for example) I lose the formatting: which does no good for her sanity.
You could try reading them in to the free office suite OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) and then saving them as word2k documents.
Robert, count your (her) blessings. A couple weeks I was involuntarily (corporately) "upgraded" from Office 2000 to Office 2003. 2003 seems to have some interesting features, and one or two that are nice (but I can live without) but it seems (from their own "help" facilities) that for security 2003 is a wretched mess -- and certain aspects of my job cause to work, from time to time, in extremely insecure environments. The only way I've found in 2003 to avoid bunches of annoying messages when you open & close files is to make your system (their documentation implies) vulnerable to attacks.
I'm about to install OpenOffice and use it instead.
First make a backup copy of all the Word 5.0 files to a CD-R. In Microsoft Word 5.0 try printing all files to Post Script files. Open the postcript files in Adobe Acrobat 6 and save them as Acrobat PDF files. There are utilities for converting PDF to Word. Use one of them to convert PDFs into Word XP (2002) files.
Didn't some medieval dudes try this with lead and gold?
I was going to suggest a lot of copy and pasting, but it she loses the formatting (say for squared, etc.) then what a drag to go back in and Format those formulas individuallly.
Hmmmm
Has she tried saving them -- and getting the automatic prompt of do you want to save it in XP-----?
How do you convert pdf files to word files? Wow! I didn't know I could do that.
Did Microsoft publish the file format specifications of MSWord 5 - or was it a secret, proprietary format?
Here is a Google search for the terms pdf to word. There are several programs listed on the first page. I get pop up ads and spam for these kinds of programs all the time.
Well, individually reading in old files is now do-able: I found a conversion routine under microsoft called wdsupcnv.exe that creates extra reference files in c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\*.cnv that does convert "up" from Word5.0 to Word2000 when the (old) file is loaded.
BUT, that converts the old fiole.
How would I convert the previous reference file (in MSWord5.0) that does the same thing that autotext changes in MSWord 2000 and MSWordXP (MSWord2003 = MSWordXP as I understand MicroSoft's confusing designations!): when a new file is being written, autotext changes the typed-in phrase or text into a new formatted text string.
It may also be possible to save the PDF directly to a Microsoft RTF (rich text format) from within Adobe Acrobat, but I don't know how good a job it would do.
http://www.pdfzone.com/resources/tips_techniques/101550.html
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This particular function (converting pdf into word) is completely untested (by me at least!), but listed with these other programs:
http://downloads.suntimes.com/category.php%5Baction%5Dbrowse%5Bi%5D40%5Bid%5D83%5Bf%5D%7C%7C%7C%7C%5Bs%5Dproduct.date_released%7CDESC%5BSiteID%5Dsuntimes
It appears I'm looking to "convert" a Word 5.0 glossary into a MSWord2000 or MSWordXP autotext reference file.
Or, failing to "convert" or "upgrade" the glossary file, (normal.gly is the default) I would need to "import" the old glossary file that holds formatting information (which is NOT a standard ASCII test file - much to my blasted irritations!) into the new "autotext file.
I also found a page about converting glossaries here.
Microsoft used to use a format called "BIFF" for a lot of files, but I haven't seen any indications that it was used for the glossary.
I wish we could find a solution. I've had a long-standing concern that many documents we use today will become inaccessable in the future due to lack of published file format specification.
Sometimes you just have to slog through it manually. Oh well, good luck on the migration.
Try doing the same thing with Outlook Express. It will handle HTML tags and code and convert it....which is what super and subscript is mainly.
Paste your formula into a new email window and click on the tabs in the lower left to see the source. Copying and pasting that into MS Word2k should work as Word2k should be able to format the HTML. It's worth a shot.
Hmmmn. Different approach. Thanks.
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