[GNC] ancient gnucash files not opening

[David Carlson]

If GnuCash can detect that the file was created by an earlier version which
cannot be read and converted automatically to the current
version, there should be a way to read which version is needed to open it.
Then it should be possible to download a pre-compiled version from some
source on the GnuCash website to read it and convert it to a newer version,
although if it pre-dates Windows availability, for example, it probably
would, as Liz points out, mean some time spent with virtual machines to get
it up to a more recent version that can be opened with a version of GnuCash
that runs on your current machine.

I recently wanted to read an old spreadsheet that is in a format that is no
longer supported by any of the spreadsheet conversion tools that I was able
to find.  As time goes by such things will probably happen more frequently.

I think that it would be nice to have a FAQ about what it takes to do
this,  There is already some fragmentary information here <
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#Q:_Can_a_new_GnuCash_release_still_read_my_old_data_file.3F>
but it is not in a form that real users could follow.  Developers  hint,
hint.

David Carlson

On Mon, May 13, 2019 at 5:16 AM Liz <edodd at billiau.net> wrote:

> On Mon, 13 May 2019 09:35:12 +0000 (UTC)
> "David T. via gnucash-user" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:
>
> >  I don't even know whether those earlier versions will run on your
> > machine today.
> >
> > I don't know whether there's another way to do this.
> >
> > David
>
> A long slog, with virtual machines and old operating systems, would be
> possible.
>
> Liz
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-- 
David Carlson