Pagemaker 6.5 file Conversion

I'm using PM6.5 on a Windows 7 platform. I had it loaded on a Windows XP computer, and Used PC Mover (from laplink) to move the files to Windows 7. Since then I keep backups of my Hard drive on other Hard Drives. The copy I bought only allowed 1 move, and I don't know whats going on with that product now.. but you might look into that! My PM6.5 works fine on Windows 7, But I also did a virtual Windows XP drive for some programs I added since then. I won't upgrade from win7 because I have a lot of money invested in music software that won't work on a newer version.. but I'm satisfied anyway! Hope this helps

I have been a user of PageMaker 6.5 for many years and was disappointed when it would not load on my new Windows 10 computer. I did stumble upon a potential work around.

On my Windows 10 computer, I was looking through a hard drive from an old computer running windows 98 which was able to run PageMaker 6.5. Of course this hard drive had the operating system from the old computer since I had simply pulled the hard drive from the unit. Out of curiosity I double clicked on the PM65.EXE file. Much to my surprise, PageMaker 6.5 started. I reloaded PageMaker onto an old Windows XP laptop to have a more current operating system and smaller cleaner hard drive. I then cloned the hard drive of the laptop to a USB flash drive. I can now insert the USB drive into my Windows 10 computer and start PageMaker 6.5. I did have to rename the "PM65.CNF" file to "PM65old.CNF" and let the program recreate the file in order to be able to save defaults. I haven't use it to extensively yet and I am sure I can probably streamline it to some extent. Some more experienced computer users can probably offer more improvements!

I am in the same position as @slowswim. YEARS of my work has been made inaccessible by Adobe's high-handed attitude to people their work and creativity. It is why I no longer would dream of using or installing Adobe products. They've destroyed the concept of digital being forever. I wish Aldus never sold out to them! 😞 The advice you are getting only goes so far Slowswim. From my experience, it is not just Pagemaker will not install on operating systems after Windows XP, it is also impossible to install on 64bit hardware. Peter Biggs claimed it was in 2015, but I've been unable to replicate his success. I'm still hoping I can find an old PC which will run PM so I can copy and paste text to a pure text editor as well as retrieve images, plus print an original hard copy for the archives. I'm afraid even the work-around using later Adobe products is just counter-productive. Believe me, I feel your pain.

Here is a tip that might save you some time, assuming you have a high res PDF with bleed from the original PM file. Use an Acrobat preflight fixup to move all of the the images, text and vector objects to separate layers, turn off the layer visibility of the text layer in Acrobat, then use a 2nd preflight fixup to discard the hidden layer. Place the PDF with the images and vector graphics into a background layer of your converted InDesign file and lock it, then delete all of the original placed low res images. You will loose the ability to easily move and re-size the images, but you can always place the original image(s), where needed and delete or hide the background PDF. You might also need to keep the original (empty) image container if you need to wrap text.

For everyones' information:

I have converted the file. The PageMaker file was 270 MB. It took InDesign CS6 a couple of minutes to open that on my aged cheesegrater. Of course there were missing fonts and missing links, but InDesign imported the paragraph styles. Tracking gets chaned as well. Seems like PageMaker supported some kind of patterns, which InDesign does not support.

INDD File is now around 50 MB, IDML is even smaller.

Thank you everyone for your responses.  I do appreciate it.  I tried to edit the original message to say INDESIGN instead of ILLUSTRATOR because, yes, INDESIGN is the correct program I am trying to get the file into. But it wouldnt let me. I think because the hashtags have already be set for the post.

with that said. I am continuing to search the interwebs in hopes that i can find a service or program that can convert large file.

some of you will find this funny... I did get this...

Now why  would the Adobe team want me to email them at an OUTLOOK email address?? mmmmm

OK. HEY ADOBE. I'm still curious why you dont offer this as a service.  Seriously. Now I'm getting spam over it?

Please keep the suggestions coming folks.

Cheers.

I still have InDesign CS6 installed and running.

Would be willing to convert one PageMaker file - I have no experience with PageMaker conversion, so I just want to see how it works. I also haven't seen a PageMaker file in ... quite a while, so there is also some sentimental feeling around it.

Since I'm in a larger project, I have close to no time, which means that all I will do is open that file and save it as an InDesign CS6 file (or IDML if you prefer that). No additional editing, checking or whatever. If that is OK, please upload the file to Dropbox or wetransfer or Creative Cloud and post a link.

I offer you another option, not sure if it's practical in your current sitruation.

Grab a computer and install an Operating system that supports or is compatible with Pagemaker 6.5

Install Pagemaker 6.5 and open those files and convert them to PDF.

That's likely the hard side. 

With PDFs of those files try and purchase an utility that converts them to current InDesign files that can be edited anyhow.

https://www.recosoft.com/products/pdf2id/

The utility or plug-in is called PDF to ID.

You will not hear from Adobe. The position is clear: support ended years ago. It's clear Adobe feel no moral or legal obligation to help people run "obsolete" software or preserve or convert files made with that software. Heck, they have closed down entire cloud services, deleting millions of customer files... WARNING, scammers may contact you privately pretending to be Adobe staff. Adobe will never send you a private message asking you to email an account that isn't @adobe.com, or use Skype. Adobe never ask you for their password. These scammers want your Adobe info, credit cards, your money and control of your computer, please take care.

I'm in agreement with Monika that the conversion from PageMaker should be to InDesign not Illustrator. PageMaker and InDesign are both page layout programs, whereas Illustrator is an illustration program.

If you have an Adobe CC subscription, you can download and install InDesign CS6. InDesign CS6 can open PageMaker version 6 to 7 files. Once the PageMaker file is open in InDesign CS6, you can save it as an InDesign file.

Adobe does have a free trial version if you want to try it out to make sure that the Adobe CC subscription works for what you need.