Making MS Works work

by Harold Soloman

I use Microsoft Works data bases regularly. I also use Works for my simple everyday spreadsheets which do not require the higher functionality of Lotus 1-2-3 or Excel.

Recently I was confronted with two cases in which I had to convert a "tabular" type data base into a Works spreadsheet, in one case for further conversion into Excel and then MS Word for possible publication, in the other case for distribution to members of a research project most of whom do not have Works and need the spreadsheet format so they can read it with Excel.

As far as I know there is no regular function that allows you to do this, but I found that I could cut one column at a time off the left-hand edge of the data base and then paste it onto a blank spreadsheet. This worked fine -- using Works 3 running on Windows 3.1.

The next time I tried it using Works 2001 running on Windows 98 SE. This time, instead of the cut-off column pasting smoothly onto the spreadsheet, I got a nasty message informing me that the contents of the clipboard could not be pasted, and that I should select a single cell in the upper left corner of the range. I have yet to figure out what this means.

The moral of the story -- never discard an older system. You never know what dirty tricks lurk beneath the slick sales pitches for the latest and greatest versions.

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