Alea jacta Ouest

Thanks to Steve Maser, I’ve been able to correct additional issues.

I now have two scripts.
The first one works through Drag & Drop. You can drag files or folders on the script and it will scan for the old file types and replace them with the new ones (recursively in the entire folder if you dropped a folder).
At the end of the process, it tells you that the files have been converted. It doesn’t necessarily mean that files were outdated and were converted, just that all files were scanned and the ones with outdated codes – if you had any – were updated. It’s just an indication that the script is done.

After that, you should be able to double-click the files to open them in Office 2008 SR1.

The second script is a Folder Action Script. I created it because I thought it would be useful to people using either FireFox 2 or Eudora for instance. You can activate the script for your attachment download folder for instance. Every time a new file is downloaded in the folder, the script will run in the background and update the file type for you.

To quote John McGhie:

Users may also experience some character transposition. The WDBN format was an eight-bit format, the W8BN format is expected to contain Unicode.

So files that legitimately had these outdated file types (very very old files) might be affected in a negative way.

1) Place the script in ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts

2) Make sure Folder Actions are enabled

3) attach the script to the folder

Both scripts are here : http://www.cortig.net/files/FileTypeScripts.zip. Use at your own risks!!! No warranty whatsoever (as always).

You do whatever you want with them (under a Creative Commons licence).