Upgrading from V4 to V9... best way to export data?

[Crossett]

As I understand it .FP3's aren't compatible with .FP7's so I have to export all the data and then import it again into new records I create in FM9. What would the best format for the export be? Excel? Are there any tips you guys know to make the transition smooth?

[Lee Smith]

Start by reading the White Papers at FMI

FileMaker Inc

and the Knowledge Base Here

Edited January 8, 2009 by Guest

[comment]

As I understand it .FP3's aren't compatible with .FP7's

This is not entirely true: you can drop .fp3 files onto Filemaker v.9 and it will convert them to .fp7. This is not a recommendation to actually use the converted files, but importing data from them has the advantage of maintaining data types.

[ShosMeister]

I ran into the same question myself upgrading a 30 file solution from 6.x to 9.x. I tried to find lots of AppleScripts or Automator solutions to it and finally settled on the following which worked out great.

I took a copy of the files and separately worked on converting them cleaning up relationships and other minor errors. Once they were all clean and working, I took the current production version and created a second folder for them. I took all of those files and dropped them onto my FM9 application which performed the basic conversion. These were not working as relationships and all would be invalid, but, they served as my "dirty" converted.

Within the converted copy, I created a script that would import the records directly from it's matching converted (in the above step) production file. The script would open file 1 of my clean converted, delete all records and then import from the "dirty" converted files.

Worked great for me. It took a while to get the scripts setup, but, once done, I could run it a bunch of times to test and ensure all was working before my final conversion.

The final step that I did manually (since I only had 3 files to deal with) was to adjust the auto-enter ID number fields to the correct next increment.

Hope that helps! Good luck.