bservial

I am not sure if the above comments are directed to me or not. If so, I do NOT have any X versions of Chiefarc. My Chief 8 full was an upgrade from 7 full and was purchased on Feb 2, 2003. The point is almost moot at this time. Working on a packet for permit and construction purposes. Part of that is a structural cross section which is time consuming to draw. I am almost done with that layer now so my immediate need has disappeared. I am still curious as to why it appears my older files may be opened using a version at least 10 newer, yet I can't open files that are 2 versions back. IE use Chief 8 to open chief 7 or 97. History: My purchased versions starting in 1994 with 1.2, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0. Those were all shipped on 3 1/2 floppies. There were MANY updates to all those prior releases. Then 1997 was released 8/7/97, 6.0 on 7/18/99, 7 unknown, 8 bought on 2/2/2003. Those were all on CD. That was the extent of my purchases.

Dermot, thanks for the reply. I seem to remember when upgrading that the instructions of the day mentioned you should open prior version files and save them in the newer version. I was explained that there may be needed cleanup, but not that you wouldn't be able to open them. I have may files created in Chief 97 and Chief 7 that won't open in Chief 8. My dongle for 97 got fried by an improperly wired USB port. My Chief 7 dongle works. I am maintaining a Windows 7 32 bit computer to run Chief 8 because the dongle driver is only available in 32 bit format. I just tried installing Chief 7 on the same drive as Chief 8 and the driver installation balked at having dongle drivers so I backed out because I am in the middle of a design using 8. I don't think the files are corrupted because the message is simply that "this version can't open that file" or something similar.

Version 8, not X8. I have it cureently running on a Windows 7 32 bit computer. Works fine but I wanted to access some old files and no can do.

I am an old CA user that started with the very first version. My last version is version 8. I read on the old forum that old files can be opened by versions up to version 8. That doesn't work for me. I can't seem to open anything created with any version before 7. Should I be able to?