How to convert Hebrew Windows 98 Office Docs to W2000 or later

[Les Desser]

I have been given some Word and Excel 97 docs which have probably been
created under Hebrew Windows 98 + Hebrew Office 97.

I have had a trawl through the Microsoft site without any luck as to how
I can convert the Hebrew content to be legible in Office 2000 or later
on Windows 2000 or later.

Anyone able to help?

Thank you.

 

[garfield-n-odie [MVP]]

Word 97 through 2003 share the same basic file format. Ditto with Excel
97 through 2003. So opening a 97 file in a 2000, 2002, or 2003
application should not be a problem. But you probably need to install
Hebrew fonts on the computer you're using to open the 97 files, or else
you'll probably see boxes and symbols instead of Hebrew characters.

 

[Les Desser]

Word 97 through 2003 share the same basic file format. Ditto with
Excel 97 through 2003.

I agree that file format has not changed.

So opening a 97 file in a 2000, 2002, or 2003 application should not be
a problem.

But it is!

But you probably need to install Hebrew fonts on the computer you're
using to open the 97 files, or else you'll probably see boxes and
symbols instead of Hebrew characters.

That is precisely what I see but with W2000 & Office 2000 and later the
Hebrew fonts are included but still produce gibberish. Hebrew has been
enabled and typing in Hebrew is OK with the inbuilt fonts.

Changing the font of the existing Hebrew text to one of the inbuilt
Hebrew fonts just changes the gibberish to some different gibberish.

I think the problem is that W2K and O2K and later use Unicode to
represent special characters while Hebrew versions of W98 and O97 used
some other encoding.

So while file formats have not changed the encoding of non-standard
alphabets have changed. So some form of conversion is necessary.

Les Desser
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