Pagemaker 6.5 file Conversion

[johnc74032420]

i've read the older posts concerning this matter and have found, quite frankly zero help from ADOBE in this matter, when they should be the ones who should be spearheading this charge.  they are the ones who have created this issue with the newer version incampatibility and should also be the ones who should fix the mess.  why can we not get a better situation where we can convert older outdated files types to newer versions of adobe products?  i have a LARGE pagemaker 6.5 file that is incredibly importmant to me.  it contains thousands of hours of work in it.  i've been hanging on by threads with a less than decent PDF it made 10 years ago.  i've decided to go back to the original PM6.5 file and revamp it.  I purchased a copy of Illustrator hoping i could just open the PM6.5 file and convert it, only to now read that i am many versions outdated.  there doesn't seem to be any third party out there creating conversion programs that will convert 300 MB 300 page PM6.5 files online or otherwise.  ADOBE what is your opinion on this matter?  i see nothing from you.  Why is there no conversion method available to graphics professionals and individuals?  Are we just left for fodder?  Thank you.

[Moved from Community Help (which is about the forums) to a better forum... Mod]

[Jay--Kay]

I am in the same position as @slowswim. YEARS of my work has been made inaccessible by Adobe's high-handed attitude to people their work and creativity. It is why I no longer would dream of using or installing Adobe products. They've destroyed the concept of digital being forever. I wish Aldus never sold out to them! 😞 The advice you are getting only goes so far Slowswim. From my experience, it is not just Pagemaker will not install on operating systems after Windows XP, it is also impossible to install on 64bit hardware. Peter Biggs claimed it was in 2015, but I've been unable to replicate his success. I'm still hoping I can find an old PC which will run PM so I can copy and paste text to a pure text editor as well as retrieve images, plus print an original hard copy for the archives. I'm afraid even the work-around using later Adobe products is just counter-productive. Believe me, I feel your pain.

[Test Screen Name]

Tip: as well as your excellent plan to save the text and a printout, also archive a PDF of each file. This may give you information which, with a lot of work, you can reuse partially.

[Monika Gause]

"I wish Aldus never sold out to them!"

Let's just assume that Aldus had enough money to continue operation.

When Adobe aquired Aldus, Aldus already had been working on InDesign - Codename K2 - for some time. Now what would have happened when it was finished? They would have killed PageMaker in the same moment, because you just can't continue 2 applications that serve an identical purpose. That would be insane. They would have kept the better app with the modern codebase, the modern app concept and modern features: their new baby, K2.

They would have offered you a sidegrade from PageMaker to K2 or whatever name they would have given it and that's that. Now guess what? Adobe did the same: offer you a sidegrade PLUS build conversion tools for your files into InDesign. Obviously you didn't want that. And that's where you are now.

[Dov Isaacs]

@Jay--Kay,

It has been over 20 years since Adobe released InDesign. It was pretty apparent even at that time that PageMaker was on an EOL (End Of Life) course; it was no secret and the vast majority of PageMaker users with archives of PageMaker documents took care to either convert those documents to InDesign or to at least make PDF versions and secure assets such as text and imagery for possible repurposing later. Adobe continually encouraged PageMaker customers to migrate to InDesign including special pricing many years ago for PageMaker users upgrading to InDesign. We are sorry you didn't heed that encouragement at that time.

FWIW, I can still open my pre-release InDesign 1.0 documents with the current version of InDesign, 21 years later. That is a much longer run than PageMaker had in total.

The issue of retrieving content from old, discontinued formats is not limited to PageMaker. Ever try retrieving old Wang or WordStar word processing documents? Even some very old Microsoft Word documents will no longer fully or properly open. How about some EBCDIC-based document formats on 7 track magnetic tape from the IBM System/360 days of the 1960s and 1970s?

Yes, that is a general problem with digital data formats for better or worse. Other than for “final form content” for which we have PDF (an ISO standard) and some image formats such as TIFF, JPEG, etc., you need to assume that you will pretty much need to continually manage and possibly upgrade digital assets.

[federico platon]

You cannot blame Aldus, Adobe or Microsoft or Intel, ...., for having an application, Pagemaker and many more. than will not run, work, on future oerating systems or CPU in computers. 

My cassette tapes will sound only while my tape deck works, if it breaks down and do not find another that still works, it gets lost. No they do not play on Compact Disc, or DVD players. Let alone an mp3 player. You need to transfer or convert it while it's materially possible.

Digital is forever, well maybe but it is not eternally backwards compatible.

There are still old computers around with a corresponding old Windows version, even with 3,5 disk readers, even floppies! They will do the work you need as if time clock had stopped for 20 or more years.

Make sure too, the storage of those files is faultless. I have several CDR, external disks with lost or damaged files.

Sometimes, I would like to play with Adobe Streamline, and other discontinued Adobe apps despite their limitations and outdated standards, or legendary Expression 3 or  Fractal Design's Bryce, but they will not run either on Windows 10 and current Intel processors. Future compatibility has a high cost and most of the time is practically impossible. 

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

I also feel your pain, but I see no point in carping about Adobe, especially since they gave PM users ways to convert their old files to ID for many years after it was terminated. Even Quark can't open some of their legacy files, so the situation here is not unique. Ready Set Go!?? Good luck!!  What I would have loved to see, as it would have elimiated 90% of the angry messages here, is if Adobe had created a small utility program that converts old PM code into ID code... essentially doing what they did many years ago to allow PM 1.0-4.0 files to be opened by PM 6.5. They took old PM4.2 code and stripped out all the code except for the ability to open old files and resave them as 4.2 files, which 6.5-7.0 could then open. They also offered it for free to people that needed it. The issue I see with the current CC verisons, is now that the software is required to be 64-bit, the old code to open PM in CS6 is no longer compliant in that respect and would have to be reenginnered to work now. Adobe rightly saw so little need for that, why waste the resources on it. Even Markzware, who offered conversion plugins in the past stopped developing ones for PM.  But maybe it's time to revist that thought. Maybe take old CS6 code, drop out everything except the conversion code, and offer taht up to those that can still run it in a 32-bit world.

[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. 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!

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Indeed, there are ways around it. I personally have working PM65 and PM7 installs on a W10 64 virtual machine,  installed directly using an installer. (I did it for sh*ts and giggles just to see). Of course the Distiller component would not install, as expected, but there are ways around that, too.

[Earl Leo]

I'm using PM6.5 on a Windows 7 platform. I had it loaded on a Windows XP computer, and Used PC Mover (from laplink) to move the files to Windows 7. Since then I keep backups of my Hard drive on other Hard Drives. The copy I bought only allowed 1 move, and I don't know whats going on with that product now.. but you might look into that! My PM6.5 works fine on Windows 7, But I also did a virtual Windows XP drive for some programs I added since then. I won't upgrade from win7 because I have a lot of money invested in music software that won't work on a newer version.. but I'm satisfied anyway! Hope this helps