Converting Officevision/400 Document to MS Word

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CONVERTING OV/400 DOC TO WORD

http://www.as400network.com/nwn/story.cfm?ID=7473

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Problem:

My company uses many OfficeVision/400 (OV/400) documents (text documents with no data merges). I know IBM won't support OV/400 much longer, and we want to move toward a substitute. We're gradually replacing green screens with PCs and Client Access and use Microsoft Office extensively. We're not planning to use Lotus Domino. Can we convert OV/400 documents to Microsoft Word?

Solution:

You can convert OV/400 documents to Word. These instructions work for Word 2000. These steps should be similar to those you'd use with other recent versions of Word.

1. Install the Microsoft Office Converter Pack. This is an executable file you can obtain either from the Office Resource Kit CD or by downloading it from http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/2000/appndx/toolbox.htm. The Converter Pack adds some new supported file types to Word including RFT-DCA, which is a subset of the RFTAS400 format that OV/400 uses to store documents on the AS/400.

2. Next, use Client Access or FTP to access the OV/400 documents in your AS/400 folders. (I used FTP to copy an OV/400 document to my local PC.)

3. Start Word and click the File Open button. In the "Files of type:" drop-down list box, select RFT-DCA.

4. Find the OV/400 document you want to open and click the Open button.

Word will then open the OV/400 document. Be aware that some OV/400 document contents, such as data-merge instructions (which your documents don't have), won't be converted. Finally, save the document as a native Word document.