Filemaker Help sorely needed!

[picnichouse]

Hello,

I recently took over the computer maintenance tasks of a small company, about five people running filemaker to keep track of advertising contacts. One of my jobs is to merge all the filemaker documents into a master doc, which seemed easy enough, but I soon encountered a bit of a nightmare.

First off, these guys are running FM 2.5. Second, and more importantly, the old computer guy who designed the database left on bad terms and password protected the database so layouts can't be changed.

Is there any way to retreive the password? I assume not, but thought I'd ask. Beyond this, I guess I'll have to export all the data and recreate the database from the ground up, to the best of my ability.

Finally, for the time being, is there a way to merge the databases? Each has about 5,100 entries, where about 150 are different from eachother and 4,850 are all the same. Is there a way to get it to copy over only the unique files back in FP 2.5?

Sorry if this is posted to the wrong area, but it was multifaceted so I just chose general.

Thanks in advance,

Andrew

[Robert Kidd]

Firstly I would upgrade your FM version, it really isn't too expensive for a 5 user VLA and you will get lots of benefit.

I suspect the password can be retrieved. If you post a clone copy I will see if I can extract it for you.

Why were the databases set up as seperate files in the first place? I suspect there was a good reason. It may be removing the duplicate records would be a better idea, but again if you post clones we can have a look.

[Charles Delfs]

There is a public password retriver for fmp version 3 floating around (Kazaa or eDonkey) by passware.

Upgrade to version three, then recover the password. from there import the record into the best database and match the key fields to remove dup's.

Charles

[picnichouse]

Hey, thanks so much for your help. I'm a little apprehensious about posting my database online, even without the records, as it isn't mine and I'm not comfortable taking that kind of liberty with their privacy issues. Robert, would you mind sending me your e-mail address and I'll e-mail it to you? It's about 96K. My e-mail is [email protected]

Upgrading to FileMaker 6 was the first thing I did when I came in, but I was trying to get some basic work done in 2.5 before completely overhauling their systems. Robert, the file I'd be sending you is a Filemaker 6 file.

Also, when FileMaker converts the 2.5 file, it doesn't seem to carry over the creation date, modification date or other auto-enter data. It's all blank in my filemaker 6 file. Anyone have an idea why this would be?

Thank you kindly

Andrew