Open...

Open brings up a dialog box to open an existing file.

To open a file:

1. Choose Open from the File menu.

2. In the file dialog box that appears, select the file you want to open.

3. Click Open or double-click the name of the file.

By default, Mathematica shows only the files that it knows exactly how to open.

See: Open Special... for how to open other file types.

Keyboard shortcuts: o (Windows); o (Macintosh); o (X).

Mathematica understands the following file types:

Notebook

You can open notebooks created using any version of Mathematica. When opening a notebook created using Version 2 or earlier, a dialog box appears allowing you to convert the notebook to Version 4 format.

Important: Check that you have write permission in the directory where you are converting the notebooks. Otherwise Mathematica will not be able to convert the files.

Text

Files in plain text from any word processor are opened with all the text in a single cell. When all the text appears on one line, you may want to switch the cell's style to "Text" style, which is normally a word-wrapping style.

EPSF

Encapsulated PostScript files open as notebooks containing a single graphics cell. For a file originally produced by Mathematica, the resulting cell is identical to the one that produced the file. For a file produced by another program, the PostScript may require some manual editing before it can be rendered or printed.

Scrapbook (Macintosh)

Files from the Scrapbook open as notebooks containing all the PICT, TEXT, and SND (sound) objects in the scrap file. Note that you cannot save the resulting file in Scrapbook form.

PICT (Macintosh)

Files from most graphics programs saved in PICT format open as a single cell containing the picture in the file.

QuickTime (Macintosh)

QuickTime movies are opened as a QuickTime cell.