Hi,
I need to convert old .SAM (AmiPro) files and following advices from
willie-ga and kaustubh-ga, I tried both MS Office Converter and
ami332.csv. None is working and I get a message "this is not a valid
win32 appication".
Can anybody help? What should I do ?  Thanks in advance.
Elde-ga

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Request for Question Clarification by efn-ga on 10 Sep 2004 23:57 PDT

When I had this problem, I used the commercial software product
Conversions Plus and it worked fine.  So that's one possible solution
for you.

Just now, I tried the Ami332.cnv file and it also worked.  From the
message you quoted, I wonder if you tried to open the Ami332.cnv file
as it it were an application, by double-clicking on it or something. 
That's not how it works.  To use this file, you move or copy it into
the \Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\TextConv folder on
your disk.  Then when you run Microsoft Word, you should be able to
open an Ami Pro file with the .SAM file type within Word.  After that,
you can save it as a Word document.

Maybe you did all that.  If so, and if you don't want to buy
Conversions Plus, I'd suggest you give us some more details about
exactly what you did when you tried to use the Ami332.cnv file.  It
might also help to know what version of Word you are using.

If there's enough information here to solve your problem
satisfactorily, let me know and I'll post an answer.

--efn

I just copied, pasted and re-formatted when I did my stuff.

But it wasn't a lot.

Thanks for your reply.
I did the mistake to open the file ami332.csn, but afterwards, I used
it the way you suggest. I had to create a TextConv. file in \Program
Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ where I copied ami332.csn, but
when I try to open my old .sam file, I cannot but see unreadable
letters.
You correctly understood that I do not intend to use payware as I only
have a few old files to convert.

Hope you bring me good news !
Thanks and regards.
elde-ga

The fact that the TextConv folder was not already there is a bit
ominous, suggesting that maybe you have a version of Word that can't
use that converter file.  That is, if you had to create the folder
(and you hadn't previously deleted it yourself), there is a good
chance that Word won't be looking there.  What version of Word do you
have?

When you opened the .sam file, was that opening the file directly or
opening it in Word?

If you only have a few files, maybe you could use a free trial version
of Conversions Plus.

http://www.dataviz.com/downloads/index.html

Or, as probonopublico suggested, open the files in Ami Pro, select
all, copy, and paste into Word.  If you don't have Ami Pro, you can
probably get it cheaper than Conversions Plus.

Thanks efn.
I have Word 2002.
When I open the .sam file, a window pops-up and asks me to select a
program to read it. I tried to open it from Word but I then get a
fully unreadable text.

Lately I followed your suggestion and tried to download the trial
version of Conversion Plus but this program does not appear in the
trial versions' list.

elde-ga

Sorry, I'm out of ideas.  Maybe somebody else can help.  Good luck.