I have seen the light but my work wont come with
 

Up until just recently I have used the 3D MAX program I have created countless items and scenes however recently I sampled the Maya 6 and found it to my liking. The Maya system is infinitely more forgiving and user friendly in my personal opinion. I created many models and scenes using max and I don’t wish to just discard them, but since I taught myself to use both programs I don't know how to properly export from 3D max to Maya 6 so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Zero

I THINK that you can export them as objects (.obj's) then import them into Maya, I dont' have any hands one knowlage of this but I think you can do it

I tried this suggestion however the task failed and in the operation bar in the bottom right I received an error in pink saying Error reading file. I said ok and try another, then another and yet again another all different files and still received the same error reading.

there's a program I like called Deep Exlporation that does a good job of converting files. Might give it a try.