Old Mac files displaying in directory as .exe?

[Sbrem]

So I'm trying to find some old files, and I'm finding a lot of files that are .exe. We are now, and have always been a Mac shop, not one design has ever been created here on a PC. Some of them were created by my wife, 15 plus years ago, and she has never, ever used a PC. So, what's happening here? Hmmmm?

Steve

[UltraSeps]

So....you also look for old files.  Those could be files created by Macromedia, or gasp... Aldus FreeHand or other outdated graphics apps on pre-OS X systems the new Mac can't read.  Its odd the .exe extension is added however.  Many older Mac apps didn't add an extension to the file name, such as .fh in the case of FreeHand, so that could explain the .exe extension.

On another note, I always thought FreeHand was superior to Illustrator.  Thus just one of the reasons Adobe needed to acquire Macromedia and kill it. 

[Sbrem]

So....you also look for old files.  Those could be files created by Macromedia, or gasp... Aldus FreeHand or other outdated graphics apps on pre-OS X systems the new Mac can't read.  Its odd the .exe extension is added however.  Many older Mac apps didn't add an extension to the file name, such as .fh in the case of FreeHand, so that could explain the .exe extension.

On another note, I always thought FreeHand was superior to Illustrator.  Thus just one of the reasons Adobe needed to acquire Macromedia and kill it. 

Like yourself Steve, I also preferred Freehand, as did the wife (in fact she won't use Illy, all PS now). On occasion, a customer would send .exe files, but we knew that wouldn't work of course. Now, if an old illy file opens into code, you can edit the "header" up to the bounding box info with a newer header, and that usually works. I took the offending file to the PC in shipping and and opened it with Notepad. Lots and lots of black boxes with the word "nul" in them. I don't know anything about writing code, but that smacks of "f'd up"...

Steve

[UltraSeps]

Yep....FreeHand rocked.  I often think how great that app would be if development continued.  To this day I keep an older Mac in my office and use FreeHand MX or FreeHand 10 for things.  I was never a huge fan of Illustrator and use it today due to being forced to.  Although, I primarily live in Photoshop.

[AAMike]

Have you tried the trick of renaming the extension to .eps or.ai or .ps?

[Sbrem]

Have you tried the trick of renaming the extension to .eps or.ai or .ps?

(Big Sigh) Yeah... nothin'. I'll keep digging, I'm not the only one with this problem on the Apple boards. I just ended up having to do some real work after a while...

Steve

[Sbrem]

OK, I just transferred the file to an older machine running OS 10.4, and like magic, they became Illustrator CS3 files!

Steve

[UltraSeps]

OK, I just transferred the file to an older machine running OS 10.4, and like magic, they became Illustrator CS3 files!

Steve

Never toss those outdated Macs.  A good friend of mine who has a fairly big shop found that one out the hard way.

I just checked this out on some old files here.  Illustrator version 9 and 10 files dating back 15 years created on an old G4 Mac opened with no issues on a brand new Mac with Illustrator CC 2015.  The usual problems were fonts or missing linked images.  Although they weren't identified as an .exe file?

FreeHand files came up with the generic Unix .exe icon and were useless.

Although primarily a Mac user, Windows is much more forgiving with older files and ancient versions of applications.  Go out today, buy a Windows 10 box and it will still run long since forgotten 32 bit versions of many programs.

[Sbrem]

our oldest files go back to Illy 3.0, Freehand 2, TypeStyler 2, PS 2.0... the funny thing, is that it was only random files, no real rhyme or reason to it. We also have a Mac clone (PC Computing) from '94 that runs our Roland plotter from the same time. We keep the first generation iMac (the half ball model) as a go between from the modern Macs to the clone running the plotter...

Steve