Is there an easy way to convert an FM 2019 file to an FM 2017 file

[Judy Ha7]

A contractor sent in some FM files that I cannot open. He worked on them in a trial version of FM 2019. I only have FM 2017. Is there an easy way to convert the FM 2019 files to FM 2017?

[Bob_Niland]

Cleanest way: put a trial version of FM2019 on another machine. Open the file. Save as 2017 (it's an option), or as MIF.

Adventurous way: try a heroic open, if it still exists in FM2017.

[LinSims]

Why on another machine? You can have more than one version of Frame on a machine at a time.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

You can, but probably shouldn't, if you want to keep your production environment clean.

[Barb Binder]

FWIW, I always run the last two versions. I've had 2017 and 2019 running together since 2019 was released with no issues.

~Barb

[pulkitn]

You can do that in 2 ways :

• Save FM2019 version files to Previous version i.e FM2017 version ".fm" format
• Or you can save to MIF format which can be opened in any of these version.

[Zerkfitting]

I did a save as to FrameMake 2017 on a machine with FrameMaker 2019.  When I try to open it on in Frame 2017 it fails (saying it was created from a different version of Frame).

[Winfried Reng]

Hi Zerkfitting,

Are you really sure that you saved the files as FM 2017?

I know that you can miss this easily.

You can check the version, when you open the FM file with a text editor. In the first line it says <MakerFile 15.0> for FM 2019 and <MakerFile 14.0> for FM 2017. Of course do not save in the text editor!

And of course MIF works as well.

Best regards

Winfried

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Make sure you are fully patched up in FM2017 when trying to open the "Saved As 2017" file version. If it still doesn't work, go the MIF route.