Resolved Microsoft Bob for Windows 95

Hello,
I have a friend here who still uses his old computer running Windows 95. He said that the only thing he uses it for is to write his letters using, "Microsoft Bob (Letter Writer).

Today his computer would not boot so I went over and someone managed to get it up and running but when I opened this Microsoft Bob (I never heard of this program before) I saw many, many letters that he has written and now wants to try to save them in case the computer doesn't start again.

Well I took his computer home with me and after struggling to get the computer booted I now have opened the Bob program and see his letters. I opened one of them and saved it to a floppy specifying to save it as a .txt file. I realized that the program only allows one letter at a time to be saved as a .txt file. I think it would take me forever to save them this way.

I started looking to see where these files were saved and I think they may be saved in MSBob Letter file as there are hundreds of files in this folder. I am right now copying all of them to floppy disks. The file names are a number with an UTP extension, example 839.utp.

Do you know anyway possible that I can convert these individual letters to a Wordpad format or .txt extension at one time.

I would appreciate any advice you can give me to try to save these letters as he really wants to keep most of them as reference. As you can guess he is really not very up-to-date in his letter writing program.

Thank you for any help you can provide.

Jean

 

Try to open the file in MS Word or Wordpad. At worst, you would get gibberish & at the best the complete document with missing formatting.

As per my search on google, MS Bob wordprocessor was a stripped down version of MS Works. If you have a copy of MS Works lying around, it should also work.

 

I tried to open it in Wordpad but it was just gibberish. I will have to find a computer that has Works on it with a floppy drive and see if Works will open it.

Thanks and I will let you know how I make out.

Jean

 

Hi, I haven't been able to find anyone who has Works on their computers. I'll keep looking but do you think there is any other way to convert these files.
The file names are a number with an UTP extension, example 839.utp.
I have searched the internet but can't find anything.
Jean

 

I've had a search for software that might convert files with the .utp extension but no luck at all.

What I did find was some history on Microsoft Bob, the project was managed by Bill Gates girlfriend but was abandoned by Microsoft before the release of Win98.

This link may be of interest to some. The GUI looks more like a childs game.

http://www.bentuser.com/article.aspx?ID=327&page=1

 

Hi everyone,
I did find a computer that was running Works and I opened Works, then opened one of the files from the floppy drive A and it did indeed open the document. There was some garbage in the beginning but all the text seemed to be in place.

I left all the floppy disks with my friend and told him that he will have to open each document one at a time to see if he still needs the file. I didn't offer to do this for him as he had hundreds of numbered files on those floppy disks dating back to the year 2000.

It is terrible that Microsoft Bob made the person give the file a name when they wanted to save a letter but the program just saved it as a number.

I have done as much as I can for my friend, it is up to him to find what he needs now.

Thank you all so very much for your help. I couldn't have figured it out without you.

Jean

 

Thank you. I didn't know how to do this.
Jean