Fixing bad AppleWorks files tip

[gachenb@eis.calstate.edu (Greg R. Achenbach)]

I discovered a couple of things recently about recovering bad
AppleWorks files that may be of use to the rest of you.
 
There have been a couple of time when I have had a file that
AppleWorks could not read for one reason or another, usually the disk
getting old and developing bad blocks.  In those cases it has
sometimes worked to have a utility program (I use Cat Doctor from
ProSel) do a "Verify" on the file, and then it loads into AppleWorks
just fine.  Makes sure you then save the file to a better disk!
 
Last week I discovered something else.  I had a large spreadsheet
file that AppleWorks wouldn't load.  Mr. Fixit (again from ProSel)
was showing that there were 4 bad blocks, but I didn't have Mr. Fixit
fix the bad blocks since that would have resulted in lost information
from the file.  I went into Cat Doctor and did a "Verify" on the
file.  That fixed 3 of the 4 blocks, but AppleWorks would still not
load it, of course.  Then I went into Block Warden (a block editor
from ProSel) to see if I could read that bad block, which just
happened to be block 1581.  When going from 1580 to 1581, Block
Warden couldn't read it. But, if I went from 1582 down to 1581, then
it worked, it was able to read it.  I then had Block Warden write the
block that it had just read back to disk, and, voile, the file loaded
into AppleWorks with no problem.  Of course, I then backed up that
file to a new disk.
 
I don't know why this works, but it does.  Hope it is helpful to
someone.

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Greg Achenbach             gachenb@eis.calstate.edu (soon to be ctp.org)
Los Angeles County Outdoor Science School

"Society is like a stew.  If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of
scum on top."  Edward Abbey