Opening Pagemaker (.p65) files

[craftee_ejusa]

I have a bunch of .p65 files that I need to open and convert to InDesign. I was able to open them a few months ago but cannot seem to be able to replicate now.

I have both CC (InDesign 2019) and CS5.5 running on Mac OS 10.14.4.

When I try to open the .p65 in CS5.5, I get an error: "The PageMaker document is damaged and cannot be recovered."

When I try to open in CC, I get this error: Cannot open the file "xxxx.p65". Adobe InDesign may not support the file format, a plug-in that supports the file format may be missing, or the file may be open in another application.

Again, I know I was able to open these docs a few months ago, but I didn't think to convert them (dumb).

Any ideas?

[Rituparna5FC8]

Hello, I would be very grateful if you could convert a file to a readable PDF format and send it back. It contains my late grandmother's book and we have been trying for years for a way to open this file but haven't succeeded. Just chanced upon this thread and grew hopeful again. Here's the link to a Google Drive with the file; you can upload the converted file there or attach it here (it's nothing private). https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1USZwbBb2vhIbfJAkiyDZVSNXrNTfaBVV?usp=sharing. Thank you!

[Peter Spier]

I downloaded and opened the file, but is uses a half-dozen or so old Indic fonts that I don't have so I'm not able to do the conversion. Sorry.

[vandegraeff]

Wow I hope you are still able to help someone out? I just found an old Pagemaker file for my early artistic work close to 20 years ago.  It's a cd sized booklet and I was wondering if your offer of converting was still open.  I would be grateful.   Thanks!

[go_mo]

I no longer have a machine that supports CS6 unfortuately, so I can't help, but I hope you find someone else to help you!

[Rhin07]

Please allow me the audacity to also ask for help. In a minority language project, we need to restore the data of an excellent dictionary that are burried in a bunch of .pmd files, 13 to be exact. Could any body help converting this into InDesign format? Please PM me.

[Rob5F9E]

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 from the flash drive. 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!