Getting information off the Internet is like
taking a drink from a fire hydrant.
[Mitchell Kapor]

[NOTE: This falls under the “I just had to tell someone” category, and is probably only of interest to about three people in the whole world.]

One of my clients needs to reprint a book he published in 2001. He gave me CDs of the original computer files and asked if I could access them after all of these years of changes and upgrades. The original layout artist used a piece of software (QuarkXPress) that I used in the past but no longer keep on my computer. After all of these years, the Quark files were simply grey rectangles with .exec on them. I had no software that would open these files.

I searched the internet for similar quandaries, and found discussion boards that indicated that there was no way I could access these files. I went into a problem-solving mode based upon the premise, I couldn’t make the problem worse so I’d try several hunch-based fixes. I changed the suffix on the file from .exec to .indd (for InDesign) and, TA DA, it opened in my new Adobe InDesign CS6 just as though it had been laid out yesterday.

If I weren’t alone right now, I’d give someone a huge kiss, and buy them an ice cream cone.