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Question

Old Indesign versions not available except for $$$ now. [Trying to open PageMaker 5 file]

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
November 22, 2024
3 replies
3422 views

After wasting 30 minutes of my valuable life with an ignorant CS rep, I realize now that I have to pay (AGAIN) for an older version (which I paid for over 30 years). I have an old file from 2003 without an extension so not sure what version will open it. Does anyone have an old version that could possibly upgrade this file for me?

jmlevy

Community Expert

I have an old file from 2003 without an extension

Are you sure that it is actually an InDesign file?

If you want to share your file, someone (including me) can have a look.

Edit: @BobLevine was faster than me…

B

buzzalong1Author

Participating Frequently

Trying again ... Thanks - I'm attaching below. It did not have an extension so I added .INDD. I've tried doing that to open it, but no good. I'm guessing it's version 7.0.

B

buzzalong1Author

Participating Frequently

Well, if you tell a support persion "I have an InDesign file that won't open," that's the problem they will try to solve. Tech support is not very flexible and their help tends to be linear.

This forum is for broader help and problem-shooting. But even we can't turn an old file of some random type into an INDD compliant one. )

Thanks for the thought - I'm not meaning to be argumentative with your kind help, but putting this here so maybe Adobe will see it. My question to the CS person was "how do I download old versions of ID?" Like I have been able to do for many years. Even their links directing to help had zero information on ID.

BobLevine

Community Expert

Without an extension? How do you know it's an InDesign file? Have you tried to add the INDD extension?

What happens when you try? Do you get an error message? If so, what is it?

Pariah Burke

Community Expert

Any version of InDesign will open any previous version's files. I've opened InDesign 2.0 (2001) files in InDesign CC 2024.

Try setting the extension to .INDD and opening it in your current version of InDesign. If that doesn't work, change the file extension to .inx and try again. If THAT doesn't work, open the file in Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac) and look toward the top of the file for information about what kind of file it is.

B

buzzalong1Author

Participating Frequently

Well, no. None of those things work. Is InDesign CC 2024 somehow different from regular old Indesign 2024 (20.0). I'd love to see how you opened a 2.0 file in 20.0. Adobe can't tell me it's possible.

Pariah Burke

Community Expert

Your wish is my command. Here's a video of me doing exactly that just now... Sort of. The oldest INDD I had access to on this computer is from 2003, so that was InDesign version 3 (CS) rather than 2.0 that made the file.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/dvf0wnpgjcymruejxjmq0/InD-2024-opens-ID-2-file.mp4?rlkey=34oifo46xnd2pwt8y5pyk9rls&dl=0

If you can put your InDesign document on some cloud storage (e.g. Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.), I'll be happy to try to open it and convert it to a more modern InDesign version. Do you want 2025, 2024, 2023, or 2022 version? Private message me the location, and I'll try to convert it during business hours (Pacific time) tomorrow, Friday, 2024-11-22.

Incidentally, when I said "InDesign CC 2024" I meant the same version you're talking about. InDesign is part of Creative Cloud, so that's the CC. There's no difference other than the way people refer to it.

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