Neanderthal

Yikes! Yes, light user nowadays, I haven't really pushed the features lately. I checked the FDS link and I don't think I can pay $100 per year and get my money's worth for the little I do these days. I don't want to lose what I have in my databases, so I'll probably just export the data and find some other means of working with it.

It is surprising. I have used 8.5 up through High Sierra. My old iMac could not be upgraded beyond that OS. I'm on Big Sur now on my new iMac, and of course 8.5 won't work there. That OS requirements list does not indicate that FM 8.5 will work beyond Mac OS X 10.4.5 (Tiger). I think that list shows what OS's were known to be compatible with the particular FM version at the time of release. The version may have been compatible with several subsequent OS versions after the initial OS's listed at the time of release. So FM 16 or 17 may still be compatible with Big Sur, 3 or 4 years later,

I think I'm out of luck as far as the Educational discount ($325 from Claris). Since I'm retired, I am not an active student or active teacher or a non-profit using FM for non-profit business, so I don't qualify for the educational discount. Now my next question is where can I find a list of OS requirements for each of the FM versions. I think my only affordable option would be to buy an older version, but it would have to be compatible with Big Sur. Wondering how far back I could go. I'd probably shoot for something in the middle of that range.

Being forced to upgrade my Filemaker version. I bought it under the Educational discount just before I retired. I had to replace my computer this month and now I can't use that version of Filemaker (8.5). That's fine. It's an old version and I wanted to upgrade, anyway. The problem is the price of the current Filemaker version. I'm not going to pay a thousand or even hundreds of dollars per year for a license to use FIlemaker at home. When I still worked at the university I used Filemaker extensively, and I was pretty good at it, but I'm using it for a few small databases at home. I'm