We can't open Pagemaker files if you delete older InDesign versions!

[chitownchars]

InDesign CS6 (or older versions) opened Pagemaker files—InDesign CC doesn't allow anyone to do so! If you're going to delete all older versions of InDesign (as of May 10, 2019), you need to allow us to download a version that DOES open Pagemaker files! Please update InDesign CC ASAP or allow us to use the older versions!

[Frans v.d. Geest]

Very, very good point! CS6 can still work, but with a serial license if you still have that, you need to have bought it. But for Cloud version users, indeed you have a ver good point!

[chitownchars]

Just as an update, I got a response from Adobe and they told me to email their customer service team, who would provide a license for CS6. Well, they told me that I needed to buy this license for $349 for one computer use. I asked them if they had any other means of opening Pagemaker files as CS6 is outdated (it was released in 2012 and was phased out by Adobe in 2015) and we wouldn't use it for any other reason except to open these files. Their response was nope, not gonna help me unless I dish out a ton of money for something I wouldn't use except for Pagemaker files. This is really disappointing.

Anyone else know any other programs that can open Pagemaker files?

[Bill Silbert]

I am just curious as to how at this point so many years after Pagemaker was in general use that you still have so many unconverted Pagemaker documents?

[Steve Werner]

If you had just a few documents, you could probably ask on this forum for someone to volunteer to convert them (if that volunteer was using the InDesign CS6 with a perpetual license which is still valid). It's only running CS6 from a subscription version that now disallowed.

[kevin stohlmeyer]

Honestly my best advice is to start converting old Pagemaker documents.

Even without Adobe's announcement there will come a point where CS6 will just not work anymore due to hardware/OS updates.

Unless you plan to keep a time-capsule computer safe in a corner, your best bet is to convert them all to a more recent/current format.

[BobLevine]

Sorry, gang, but this indefensible.

While I agree with the points made, one never knows when one will have to dive into archived files.

Adobe should provide a free service for converting these files or add that feature back into CC versions of InDesign, which, I will point out, still opens early QuarkXPress files.

[MW Design]

If it is "just" the text that is important, LibreOffice can open .pm6 files.

While I have a perpetual license ID CS6, I've had varying success in the translation from PM to ID. The most important bits are there, just a bit scrambled. I just tried the LO routine and while each one opened in LibreOffice Draw successfully, they were more scrambled than ID (which were more usable with fixing). But all the text was present.

I do agree the routine should be added to CC. But if someone is willing to install PM7 using a virtual machine, Adobe ought to at least provide CC users a serial number.

[BobLevine]

It’s always been GIGO and IIRC, embedded graphics don’t make it through, but that doesn’t change the principle of the thing.

[Dov Isaacs]

Bypassing any judgements as to the issue of availability of new installations of the CS6 version of InDesign, I want to echo the sentiments of others in terms of the need to keep document formats fairly current.

Adobe release InDesign 1.0 at the end of August 1999, nearly 20 years ago. Despite the release of PageMaker 7.0 in 2001, it was pretty clear to anyone other than a clueless, diehard PageMaker fan (and there were relatively few of those) that PageMaker was a dead end.

InDesign's capability to “open” PageMaker files was never intended to treat such old files with parity to native InDesign files. 20-20 hindsight would have had us not “open” PageMaker files, but rather have a separate “convert” function with a pop-up warning about the significant amount of manual reformatting and “fixing” needed to be done to make such converted documents function fully in InDesign since the document paradigm of InDesign was dramatically different than that of PageMaker, not to mention issues such as text encoding, layout, fonts, and placed graphics.

On these forums, frequent contributors (including a number of this thread) and Adobe employees have been consistent with the message that PageMaker content be converted sooner than later. For better or worse, there are no standalone PageMaker to InDesign conversion utilities available from Adobe or third parties that we are aware of (if you know of any, please speak up) and the ability to run the CS6 version of InDesign is increasingly problematic.

As such, I would most strongly encourage anyone with collections of PageMaker source files that they need for future reference to convert them to InDesign format as soon as possible before that capability totally goes away with whatever CS6 version of InDesign you can still round up!!! (And if you don't really need to further process such PageMaker files but want a final form version of same, consider finding an old MacOS 9 or Windows XP system capable of running PageMaker and creating PDF files from same!) You don't want to end up with lost content such as those who still have diskettes with old word processing documents in Wang WP or Wordstar formats!

          - Dov

[BobLevine]

Excellent advice, Dov. There are still people popping into the PM forum asking how to get it to run on the latest versions of Win 10. These users are hopelessly lost.

The handwriting was on the wall way back in the day and IME, InDesign actually did a much better job of converting QuarkXPress files than it did with PM.

All that out of the way, I do feel under the circumstances that the relatively few users that need to convert their PM files to ID should have a way to do so since this change was made with no warning.

[MW Design]

I still get Ventura Publisher files to convert to modern software. I just finished one up yesterday and am mostly done with the second one. I haven't received a PM file for a few years. But I do have an XP Pro machine for initial steps in their conversion. For either application, the client better really want those files because even if I choose to eat some of the time involved, it's not cheap.

I seem to remember Markzware had a PM2ID plug-in. Could be mistaken. But following along Dov's advice re PDFs, Markzware does still have their PDF2ID plug-in so his advice to get those PM files into PDF is a good one. I believe there is another maker that has a similar plug-in.

In all cases, be prepared to spend some money so make sure they are not being converted due to sentiment.

[BobLevine]

They had a PUB2ID plugin but there was never a need for PM2ID.

Recosoft is the other developer with a PDF to InDesign converter.

[Dov Isaacs]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/MW+Design  wrote

I still get Ventura Publisher files to convert to modern software. I just finished one up yesterday and am mostly done with the second one. I haven't received a PM file for a few years. But I do have an XP Pro machine for initial steps in their conversion. For either application, the client better really want those files because even if I choose to eat some of the time involved, it's not cheap.

I seem to remember Markzware had a PM2ID plug-in. Could be mistaken. But following along Dov's advice re PDFs, Markzware does still have their PDF2ID plug-in so his advice to get those PM files into PDF is a good one. I believe there is another maker that has a similar plug-in.

In all cases, be prepared to spend some money so make sure they are not being converted due to sentiment.

I still have some documents from the mid 1980s in Ventura Publisher format (before Ventura Software was acquired by Xerox and subsequently by Corel, both of whom ruined a product that in its day had some features that still aren't in InDesign). Fortunately, I have no need to convert them and the text (but not the formatting) within those documents can be easily retrieved with an ASCII text editor.

The “other maker” you are thinking of is probably Recosoft?

          - Dov

[MW Design]

Memory Lane. I have my the Ventura Software versions, the Xerox versions & the Corel versions. Glad I don't need any of my VP documents from back in the day. They reside on SyQuest disks. Still have it and the SCSI card and cabling.

Most all the VP documents I receive have embedded text. If it weren't, I have JavaScripts that convert VP tagged text to other tagged text formats.

Yes, I have requested some of those features from VP to be rolled into anything. At this point I don't care which software maker does them. If no other feature, the ability to disable line breaks at the end of a paragraph (or how many ever) so paragraphs can sit side-by-side is a better method than spanning. Easier for the tagged text generation, etc. Well, and always honor space above at the top of the column. And ...

Thanks. Yes it is Recosoft. But if just the text is important and one has the PDFs, I've found Acrobat's export to docx works well.

Mike