Apple → Reading Word Docs in AppleWorks

I'm trying to help a guy with an iMac and AppleWorks 5. He & I get a nightly newsletter in Word 97 (the authors & most readers use Windoze). He doesn't have Office for his Mac, only AW5.

Taking a look at the support pages for AW, it looks like AW6 can read Word files (& Excel files) but AW5 can't.

Is there a free upgrade path from AW5 to 6? Or is the only way for him to get AW6 is to buy a new, full version?

TIA,
TG

I believe there's an MS Word Viewer in Microsoft's site that's free. there's also a shareware converter called PCconverter but i don't know how well it works. He can also download the Demo version of MS Office or Word for the Mac.
Also, if you convert the newsletter to rtf, txt, html, or any other STANDARD format (by using the "save as" command) the Mac should be able to read it fine.

one more thing...
MacLinkPlus Deluxe works fairly well.

AW 6.x is $99. How much of a discount can they give?

$40 for 6.0 on eBay:

»cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAP ··· 09826527

The upgrade to the latest 6.x is free from Apple.

tommy...I could only find a PowerPoint98 Viewer for the Mac, none for Word. We don't have any control over the format of the nightly newsletter--the author is gonna use Word97 whether we like it or not. It goes out to about 2000 people every night and I'd bet there are less than 100 Mac users and fewer without Office.

russotto...I was thinking more along the lines that I might have missed a free or greatly reduced AW5->6 upgrade.

johanneson....I'll have him check eBay.

Thanks!
TG

A couple of others you might try...Worldtext and Nisus Writer.

You can also try MacLink Plus Deluxe. I have it and don't use it that often. But, when I do use it, it's great. Opens Word docs and maintains formatting. It seems to open most mac and win formats. It also opens some graphics formats.

It's not that cheap but it's worth it if you exchange files with the windows world on a regular basis.

Found this at MacAddict.

Another option is to have your senders save their Word docs as RTF (Rich Text Format) documents before sending them to you. Many word-processing programs can open and save these files. Finally, if you can cough up a measly 20 bucks, try icWord ($19.95, www.icword.com ), a shareware app that lets you open and view Word documents - it even runs in Classic mode under OS X.

Getting the author to go with RTF probably won't happen.

Thanks a lot for the link to icword...hadn't heard about that one before.

TG