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*praying* to find a good Clarisworks clone for Windows
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Posted by Tiggerlou
Jan 1, 2015 at 06:19 PM
I have been a loyal outlining devotee for decades—my brain works in outline form—so I hope this is a good place to ask this question. I’d be enormously grateful for any advice you can give me.
The software I’ve used for years and years AND years has been Clarisworks / Appleworks. It has followed me from a Mac to Windows and through multiple OS upgrades, into Windows 7. Whenever I move to a new OS, I cross my fingers and pray that Clarisworks will work there. During all that time, I’ve been accumulating hundreds—probably thousands—of *very* important documents in that format.
I’m not a Luddite, far from it. Believe me I’d love to find something more recent, something that I can trust will last me into the future. But honestly, I have yet to find anything as good / clean / usable / powerful / reliable. Every few years I go Googling to find an alternative….and I just go back to Clarisworks.
Everything I’ve seen is either clunky and ugly—surrounding each line with a box, command buttons, “funny” icons that look like they’re drawn with a crayon—or else it is packed with features I really don’t need. For example, I’m not looking for a task manager (very happy with Toodledo) so I don’t need checkmarks. I don’t need to assign numbers and letters to the lines of the text. I don’t need multiple panes. I don’t need a fancy corkboard for writing screenplays. I don’t need smiley faces at the head of each line or color coding. I just need a clean text editor with solid outlining capabilities.
It also has to be software that won’t go extinct anytime soon. I’ve looked up lots of outlining software just this morning, and to be honest, the websites look like they haven’t been touched in years and years. That does not inspire confidence in the stability or likely longevity of their product although I’d be happy to be convinced otherwise.
And now… unfortunately… I need it SOON. For some reason (possibly because of my new antivirus software), Clarisworks has started seriously misbehaving on my computer. I click to open one document and it opens another one. Copy and paste takes literally 15-20 seconds. Clicking any of the buttons at the top (File, Edit, etc) is a wait and hope… wait and hope.. operation. This is very serious because I have tons and tons of truly mission-critical documents in Clarisworks.
BTW, if Evernote had decent outlining capabilities, I’d be a very happy camper. I love Evernote for many reasons, but alas it merely lets you indent the text.
I don’t know if I’m asking too much to be able to export my outlines—and keep the formatting. That would truly be a dream come true. One way or the other, whatever you suggest, I’d need to migrate my many *existing* outlines into it, even if I have to go through each document and re-create the indents (yikes!).
Really hoping you have something to suggest. Thanks in advance!