Can anyone tell me how difficult converting FMP Mac files to FMP PC files is? I developed a set of five related Macintosh that were for tracking donor activity for a small non-profit charity. I would like to clone them, and then convert them to a PC format for another non-prof. Can I even do this? Will all the field definitions, scripts, relationships, and layouts make the transition intact?

This is all volunteer work for a charity. All help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

I would like to clone them...

George may have issues with this

Any way in short these files should operate as intended the main issue with cross platform is FONTS. Which ones used, size. If you are on a Mac going to PC you might invest in Virtual PC to aid you in your conversion process.

With scripts there isn't too much issues but if you have many files and use Hide window there is issue with screen redraw...

i can't think of much else right now... any one else wana chime in?

Make sure you include .fp5 at the end of each of your files (if you're using FM 5/5.5), and open the databases on a PC. You should assume, happily, that almost all items will work. Fonts and the difference in space that they take (the longer the text block, the bigger the issue) will probably be the largest issue. But for the most part they will need only minor shifting along with margin management. Unless you want to purchase a PC, I would agree with utilizing Virtual PC to check as you develop.

mb

A couple more words of caution.

1. You said "cloning the fields". Cloning will clear out all values from global fields, so if you have set up any of your relationships to use a global field, you will need to re-populate the globals. Saving a copy and then deleting all records will leave the global fields populated (but it won't reset the auto index numbers).

2. The page setup script step stores 2 sets, one for Mac and one for PC. When you load up your system onto the PC, you will need to adjust all of your scripts which have a page setup step to Landscape/Portrait as applicable. Of course, you may have done it logically and written 2 scripts - pagesetup portrait and pagesetup landscape which you use as subscripts. In this case, you will only have to re-set these 2 scripts.

3. Concure with the adding of the .fp5 suffix to the file names.

4. If you are transferring these files via a CDROM you have burned, they will load up on the PC from the CD as read-only files. You will need to remove this in Porperties under windows before your relationships will work correctly again.

5. Layouts - the PC screen size is a bit smaller than the Mac. You may need to reduce the size of what were whole-screen layouts on the Mac.

6. If you have used the "|" technique for producing bar charts, then the font issue will catch you out here in 2 ways. First, the scale will be different on screen so you may need to adjust the bar lengths. Second, WYSIWYG ain't quite that on the PC. You may need to have one graph layout for screen viewing and another one for printing.