[GNC] Trouble opening ancient files

[Derek Atkins]

Thomas Klausner <tk at giga.or.at> writes:

> On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 10:22:33AM -0400, Derek Atkins wrote:
>> This looks like it might be a GnuCash 1.2 or 1.4 binary datafile.  The
>> ability to read those old binary files was removed more than a decade ago.
>> 
>> You'll need to import that using something probably as old (new?) as 1.6
>> in order to convert it to XML, but you'll probably need a very old OS in
>> order to build it.
>
> Ok, I didn't find such an old binary.
>
> Does anyone still have such a binary running, or a Windows 2.0.x exe somewhere?

You MAY be able to find them on sourceforge under the Files section.
Either that or you'll need to install an old VM to build 2.0 yourself.
Unfortunately the earliest Windows exe I've got is 2.4.0 which is way
too new for you.

>> [snip]
>> > Any suggestions on how to get versions of these files that could be
>> > opened by gnucash 3.10?
>> 
>> These later XML files are also relatively old.  My guess, you'll
>> probably need to start with 1.6 (or maybe even 1.4 for the binary data)
>> and then keep on doing File -> Open /  File -> Save As to translate the
>> data files from version to version:
>> 
>> 1.4 -> 1.6 -> 1.8 (was there a 1.8?  I don't recall) -> 2.0 -> 2.2 ->
>> 2.4 -> 2.6 -> 3.x
>> 
>> Expect this to take a while.
>
> Actually, this quite a bit easier than I expected. I downloaded the
> Windows 2.2.9 binary and opened the newer file and saved it, then 3.10
> could open it successfully. :)

Hmm.  Surprised that you could jump from 2.2.9 to 3.10 without any
issues!  I would have expected that you'd have to hit 2.4 or 2.6 first.

> Can you please fix this warning:
>
> "This file/URL appears to be from a newer version of GnuCash. You must
> upgrade your version of GnuCash to work with this data."
>
> that appeared for this file?

You would need to provide a copy of the file in (or possible work with
the devs to recreate it) in order to get that warning fixed
appropriately.

> Thanks,
>  Thomas

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-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant