Reading old Textedit files?

Question

Level 1

21 points

Reading old Textedit files?

I'm trying to recover some old documents on my M2 Mini. Unfortunately they either won't open or produce this -

MMXPR3??∏L®@ Ü<,dù∆ç ﬁc»¨Y+

'`ê LaserWriter IIP⁄Times New RomanTimesNewRomanPSMT Helvetica HelveticaTimesTimes-Roman„⁄TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMTTimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMTTimesNewRomanPS-BoldItalicMT&Helvetica-BoldHelvetica-ObliqueHelvetica-BoldOblique<

Times-BoldTimes-ItalicTimes-BoldItalic$ ˇˇˇˇ˚-ˇˇˇˇˇˇBlack-ˇˇˇ ˇˇˇˇ ˇˇˇˇ ˇˇˇˇ ˇˇˇˇ ˇˇˇˇ ˇˇˇˇ ˇˇˇˇ ˇˇˇˇ ˇˇˇˇ ˇˇˇˇ ˇˇˇˇ ˇˇˇˇ ˇˇˇˇ ˇˇˇˇ ˇˇˇˇ ˇˇˇˇ ˇˇˇˇfamily tree:`Ä&fStandard∫ˇˇˇˆ,YÄÄ$ÄÄÄ

Is there a way to make sense of these?

Mac mini, macOS 14.2

Posted on Jan 25, 2024 3:22 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 25, 2024 2:14 PM in response to Firebird28

Install the free LibreOffice Suite (currently 7.6.4) (there is an Apple Silicon installer too) and once that is done, right-click on the file and choose open with LibreOffice. The file you have may not really be a TextEdit (.txt, rtf, rtfd) document and let LibreOffice sort that out for you.

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Answer 2

Firebird28 Author

Level 1

21 points

Jan 25, 2024 3:24 AM in response to Firebird28

Sorry I should have said the docs are dated 2000.

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Answer 3

Firebird28 Author

Level 1

21 points

Jan 28, 2024 4:48 AM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks for your reply. I’ve tried it and it works fine with some files but not all. Some are a mix of text and images and this seems to be the problem.

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Answer 4

Jan 28, 2024 8:00 AM in response to Firebird28

I very much doubt you will receive different results with those mixed text and image files in any other application than LibreOffice unless you have the original Mac and software that created them.

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Answer 5

Firebird28 Author

Level 1

21 points

Jan 31, 2024 3:30 AM in response to VikingOSX

OK, thanks for your help. I guess I've a lot of typing to do to replace them!

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Reading old Textedit files?

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