Hello all,

A friend has a FMP file they have been using in v9 at thier office. The file is for an art gallery (inventory, sales and invoicing)... all integrated into 2 seperate files (the 2nd file containing only the art images). No online functions or anything seeming that complex... just LOTS of seperate tables, relationships, and billions of fields and scripts created by probably 4 previous developers.

They need some cosmetic work done on some layouts. I think i can do the changes they need but only have an older version (v7) available to me. And, I'm not familiar with what has changed with the file formats since v7. I do have the file and it opens fine without ANY alert message. And, it seems to work fine although I don't know all the functions they built in under the hood.

Can I open the v9 file in version v7, make the slight tweeks and not effect other features when they reopen it in v9?

OR..

Does anyone know of features that are effected when opening a v9 file in v7?

Any help would be great. Thanks

Although the file format has not changed, lots of features, functions, and some behaviors have changed since then...

Take a look at this PDF of some of the changes between versions. I think the biggest issues for you may be if the solution contains any script variables, new functions such as List() that can be used readily, and perhaps conditional formatting.

http://www.filemaker.com/downloads/pdf/filemaker_versions.pdf

If the scope of your work is quite short then get the free FM10 trial download - it runs for 30 days.

thanks for the help.

I did open a copy of the file and looking at the scripts I see some command lines that are blank (like a few that are within an IF-THEN command). Looks like those might represent unsupported script commands. I think i need to somehow get an upgrade then before committing to make the changes to their file.

On a similar note then... If i decide to spring for the $$ and upgrade, and then brush up on my FMP knowledge, Is there work as a FMP developer these days or is it a dead program (as one friend put it)?

I'm currently unemployed in the photo retouching buisiness and when i worked on designing databases for my last studio i loved it and could see doing it more if there is work out there.

Well just like the rest of the economy, it can get tight but FileMaker in general being a dead program... dont think so.