Corel Ventura file conversion

[bobbydvt245]

Hi, I'm looking to import my old Corel Ventura files (vp extension) into a new publishing program. I could covert the files to PDF, but I'm not sure how much extra work that would require to re-format. Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks.

[Bob_Niland]

Do you still have access to a working copy of Ventura?

If so, what other formats can it export or save to?

[bobbydvt245]

Yes, and the other formats are .PDF, .chp, .sty, and .doc or .txt.

[Barb Binder · Accepted solution]

Hi Bobby:

Reformatting is a given. The best I would hope for it not to have to retype the text. If it were me I would try .doc or .pdf (and then export the text out of Acrobat). And I thought I Ventura could export to .rtf (Rich Text Format) but it's been a very long time since I used Ventura so maybe I'm making that up. RTF would attempt to bring formatting along with it, as would Ventura to .pdf and export to .rtf.

In either case, there will be clean-up time spent in Word, and then you can import the text into FrameMaker and format it with Fm paragraph, character and table tags.

~Barb

[Matt S - Tech Comm Tools]

I agree with Barb, but with two mods:

• Don't spend time cleaning up in Word. Do the cleanup in Fm.
• Don't work with PDF, but with the RTF or DOC formats to avoid loss of paragraph and pagination info.

[bobbydvt245]

Thank you all for your help! I'm going to take Barb's suggestion and see how it goes. I've been able to use Corel Ventura since I have a PC with xp still installed but figured I was on borrowed time. I knew it was going to be a lot of work to transfer but hopefully with these suggestions it will avoid a full re-write.

[Barb Binder]

Great. If you have further questions, just let us know.

~Barb

[mikej1]

I realise this is an old post, but in case it's of use: I use Ventura 10 every day, running perfectly (or as perfectly as any program runs!) on 64-bit Windows 10.

[mbapub]

I can't get the program to run with Win 10. How did you get it to run? I was running it on a Win7 computer with a virtual XP machine. Thanks.