MamaBearTeacher Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 Here is my situation: I have a very old computer. It is a Dell which I bought in in 1999. It has Windows 98 and Microsoft Word 2000. It doesn't burn CDs and I basically save everything on the computer itself with no external hard drive. It is very slow these days and time to get a new computer. I am looking at a MacBook Pro (I think it's called) and a Dell Studio Laptop (btw, any opinions on these?). I need to transfer all my Word files to whichever computer I get. I have tons of files that are so important to me that I spent tons of time working on. There is homeschooling stuff and tons of other stuff, some documents that I worked on which are 400-500 pages. I don't want to lose it! I don't know how many files I have but probably over a thousand. There are lots of folders with subfolders etc. I was told that to save my stuff to an external hard drive which I can then transfer to the new computer I need a USB port. Apparently my computer has a USB port but it is a kind that uses very old technology and can only be used with Windows 98 so it won't work with a new computer. The other option Dell gave me was to get a local technician to open up my hard drive. This scares me too much. What if it doesn't work and they end up losing everything by accident. I thought to email myself all my Microsoft Word documents but to do so one by one would take forever and then I would have to organize them all over again into their subfolders. All of these documents are under "My Documents". Could I email myself "My Documents" and all its subfolders all at once? Anyone know? If not, any other ideas for my problem? Also, once I receive these documents on the new computer's email will I be able to open them because they will be on Word 2000 and the new computer will use a newer version of Word? Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMA Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 Yes, you can email them. There is a size limit on email attachments, usually 10 MB or less. So, you will need to email them in sets. I would not email the whole folder unless it is small enough. If you zip them before you attach them, you can send more at one time. Word should be backward compatible. I wouldn't hesitate to open them with the newer Word. Louise Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MamaBearTeacher Posted August 21, 2009 Author Share Posted August 21, 2009 Thank you so much for the good news! How do I "zip" them? I went to Open documents and it gives me the size of each file within the folders but not the size of the folders. Do you know how I can find out the size of the folders? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perry Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 You could upload everything to Googledocs. Did you try a flash drive? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hornblower Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 right click on start & choose "explore" You should get a big directory with all your folders & subfolders listed. (it will kind of look like the tree structure in Outlook Express - folders on the left & if you click on a folder, the contents will show on the right) On the left side, find My Documents or wherever you're storing them. If you right click on a folder, & select "properties" a window will pop up which will tell you the size of the file. Also, if you right click on a folder there's an option to SEND TO & you can choose that & say email or zipped folder. I don't know that the zipped folder option is there in 98 but IIRC, the SEND TO option is there. When I'm backing things up I use this method rather than doing it from Word. One last thing - I send things to a Yahoo or Hotmail or gmail address (as opposed to my home "good" email) so it's backed up away from my computer. If you do it that way, you will always have a set of those documents even if your hard drive crashes. I lost a chunk of a novel once & ever since I back up a whole bunch of different ways. I do lose some formatting when I send attachments to yahoo but that's not a concern for me.... hth - Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MamaBearTeacher Posted August 21, 2009 Author Share Posted August 21, 2009 Thanks everyone for the GREAT ideas! I checked and some of most of my folders are less than 10 MB but a few are larger. I will try sending them and see if it works. Does anyone know if I can send files with sufolders to googledocs or just separate documents? Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perry Posted August 21, 2009 Share Posted August 21, 2009 Does anyone know if I can send files with sufolders to googledocs or just separate documents? Thanks. Just looked, I don't think so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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