Suppress file opening in Convert file script step

[QuinTech]

Hello again, everybody. Former frequent poster who stopped posting when everybody else moved up to FMP7, while my company was continuing with FMP6. Hopefully that gets me some mojo for a good answer now ....

Well, we're finally moving up to FMP8, and I'm trying to design an automated conversion routine. Part of it invokes the script step Convert file to convert our .fp5 files into .fp7 files. This must be completely automatic, as we all know what happens when users get involved. It is not possible to do each conversion manually, as we have almost 1,000 licenses deployed with 85 files each.

The problem with this step is that it opens the converted .fp7 once it is converted. If there is a password on the original .fp5, then the converted .fp7 will prompt for a password upon opening. This is no good.

I don't believe I can strip the password from the .fp5 files for a reason I won't get into just yet. So my question is:

Is there a way to suppress the automatic opening of a file converted using this script step? Or, alternatively, is there a way to suppress the password or have it automatically entered?

Thanks in advance,

QuinTech

[Lee Smith]

Hi Jerry, and welcome back to the Forum.

I also waited to upgrade because of the clients budget. However, it was well worth the investment.

There is nothing automatic about this, but there are some pit falls that you should be aware of. First step should be to read the White Papers available at FMI. My biggest problem still is I still think in v6 instead of v8. It is hard to teach old dogs new tricks.

There are some utilities that you should check out, FMRobot, and Inspector come to mind.

Check the Migration Topic Area, and the Version 8 General Topics for additional help.

Glad you are back,

Lee

[QuinTech]

Thanks, Lee! Although I wouldn't count on seeing too much of me around here ... I'm more or less outmoded on this board, given that I'm, basically, a FM8 noob.

Anyhow, I figured out the answer to my question. I thought I had tested this right at the beginning, but apparently not.

In the FileMaker 6 file, I set the document preferences to try the master password as the default upon opening. This behavior will carry over to the FileMaker 8 files, and the user will not be prompted for a password.

I stumbled on this by accident in one of the files, after (I was sure) I had tested it on another file, as it seems like an obvious solution.

[Russ Coffin]

Hi forum

I'm new to the forum and hoping someone out there can give me some suggestions on best practice. This post was the closest my trolling could find on the topic.

I have a shrinkwrap fm3 runtime bound solution which I need to upgrade to fm8 or beyond. We have a number of customers all over the country so the upgrade must be totally automatic and targeted towards a non-tech savy user. The original solution had 21 related files. I have rewritten the entire solution into one fm8 file with the 21 tables internal. Now I need to import the data from previous versions. The original solution had a fm password plus another level of pw protection being a solution keeping employee medical records.

So after trying different methods and searching the forum, I am thinking I need to go through a couple of intermediate steps in the upgrade process:

1. run a new fm3 runtime solution (clone of the existing solution) which has the "try the master password as the default" set (so that the subsequent "convert" script step won't request id/pw) and script this fm3 solution to import the data from the existing solution

2. run a new fm8 "importer" solution which has the data fields required and use this file to "convert" the files from step 1, import, move and massage data as required. This step is only required to keep the final target clean of any upgrade only fields, scripts, etc.

3. Run the final target solution and import the clean data from step 2 files.

Anyone have any experience on a better approach?

Russ