I can corroborate this a bit. After cleaning an FM6 file with MDM, it
no longer recovers cleanly, restoring many long-ago deleted fields. I
can't say for sure that MDM did it but I've been doing this for 10
years and haven't seen it before. Circumstances have postponed
conversion to FM7 format, so for now we have to live with it.
I wrote an applescript to automate the cleaning of these references
in the FM7 define file references dialog; setting them all to simple
relative paths. Much less tedious that way.
geoff
On Jul 19, 2007, at 6:12 AM, Winfried Huslik wrote:
Peter,
Unfortunately I couldn't read the original question since I've just
subscribed, but what you see is typical for a file converted form
FM6 (and earlier). Back then you were unable to modify or delete a
file reference. Once it was defined it lived in the file forever.
The MetaDataMagic File Reference Fixer claims to easily remove
unwanted file references in .fp5 files. Nevertheless I suggest NOT
TO USE it. For a rationale please read <http://www.fmchecker.com/
filereferencefix.html>.
The clean but tedious method is to go through all your converted
files and set the file references manually (to a relative path
(where appropriate)).
This is a daring statement from FMI:
"Furthermore, the conversion process does not propagate
corruption that may have existed in a prior version."
which only can mean that the structure of the converted file is OK.
It can by no means guarantee that the content (which are
definitions as well as the data) is complete.
Winfried
www.fmdiff.com/fm/filecorruption.html
On 19.07.2007, at 05:07, Peter Payne wrote:
Hi, thanks for the reply.
But first, I wanted to quote some good news for you, from
FileMaker's "techbrief_fm7_migration.pdf" document, page 8:
"Furthermore, the conversion process does not propagate
corruption that may have existed in a prior version."
Now, I don't know if you can trust that 100%, but it should give
you a better start (unless the conversion fails, and then you'll
know the worst).
Roger. I wish there were a known reason why this happened in the
first place. I'm not the first Filemaker guy to think that, methinks.
I've done a conversion, and I ended up with some weird stuff,
like, I have only one invoices database, but it's reporting links
to invoices8.fp7, invoices7.fp7, invoices6.fp6, which don't/
shouldn't exist. Can I ask what MetaDataMagic does? Are there any,
er, consultants out there who are proficient in its use in
converting files?
