How to Open Word 5 Files in Word for Mac

I miss the days, decades ago, when Word featured an “Open Any File” command… it really could! We called it the “can opener” because we could throw anything at it, from WordPerfect to files created in other applications, and Word would extract the text. Today, Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac can’t even open it’s own really old Word files.

If you have old Word files, like from Word 5, use TextEdit as the conduit. Here’s how you do it:

Open TextEdit, and use File>Open to locate and open the file. It will be in plain text. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to maintain any of the formatting. If it has gibberish at the beginning or end, delete it.

Highlight and copy the remaining text.

Paste it into Word.

There you go! You have resurrected your ancient writing.