OS X not recognising Quark files

nabulou · #1 February 25th, 2007, 03:14 PM

I recently got a new Mac, running OS X 10.4.7. I have had Macs for many years and have used Quark Xpress versions 3, 4, 5 and now 7.

I have just installed 7 onto the new Mac. However, it is not auto-recognising any Quark file which I add to the computer from a USB flash drive or from a CD or anywhere. It says they are all "Unix Executable file"s.

I have tried associating the files with Quark using the Finder -> Get Info -> setting the application to Quark and then using the 'Change All' option, but this is not working. When I use the Change All is says something like "not enough information was available" to do this.

I can get them to open by running Quark and then doing file -> open and selecting the file and saying yes to the 'are you sures' etc. However, I have tens of thousands of files on CDs and backup devices. Its painful not to have just a double-click option.

I suspect it is something to do with file extensions - I've never paid them any attention, and its never caused me any trouble before. If I manually add .qxd to them, they do open. Again, it would be a nightmare to have to do this to all.

Any advice appreciated. Thanks.

Natobasso · #2 February 26th, 2007, 12:17 AM

Since your 3,4 and 5 quark files are from classic your OS X hasn't been trained to know what they are yet. First, create a quark 7 file and save it to your desktop. Get info on that file and then choose Quark from the Open With menu and click change all.

Go to your 3,4 and 5 quark files and get info on those. Select Quark 7 using the steps above and those classic files should open with your OS X Quark 7 app.

nabulou · #3 February 26th, 2007, 06:45 AM

Thanks Natobasso, but this didn't work.

It opens the Quark 7 files no problem, but not the rest, even after this activity. I've heard that quark 7 extensions are .qxp and that older version of quark are .qxd - could this be causing a problem?

Because I have so many files, I'd like to set this up so that I dont have to manually do anything to every file if possible. Any other ideas? :-)

ElDiabloConCaca · #4 February 26th, 2007, 09:49 AM

It sounds like your USB drive is formatted as FAT32, and FAT32 doesn't respect the resource fork of the file (it's basically lost).

I'd suggest reformatting the flash drive as HFS+ (unless you need it to interoperate with both Mac and Windows computers), that way, the resource fork of files will be preserved.

Likewise, with the CDs, I'd suspect that they're written as ISO9660 with DOS 8.3 naming conventions -- same thing happens here (burn as HFS+ to prevent this, unless you need interoperability).

Natobasso · #5 February 26th, 2007, 10:57 AM

Have you downloaded the 7.1 updater and checked the forums on quark.com?
http://www.quark.com/service/forums/

Here's a comment from the forums regarding opening v4 quark docs in v7:
http://www.quark.com/service/forums/...ic.php?t=15520

Unfortunately, Quark deliberately makes back saving and forward opening a pain in the keister.

FlashMac · #6 June 6th, 2007, 09:32 AM

I've got this on a Quark doc that was created in 7.1 (with the update) and saved in 6, it worked between both these versions for a few weeks but now its turned into a UNIX Exec.
Put the user onto free Quark tech support, they said try opening it as server admin, oor saving down onto users desktop as server admin, this did not work, theh next step from Quark is to send to them to try and open (decent of them to offer) but their FTP server only accepts zipped files, and the file won't zip in its current state.

So we're restoring from backup.

Natobasso · #7 June 6th, 2007, 09:47 AM

Have you tried replacing the .dotextension with .qxd or .qxp?

Also, get info on the file and change the 'open with' to Quark 7 and see if the file's icon changes. If it does, you can then open that file again in Quark.