Trouble opening CS3 files (branched)

[ingeborgk42450536]

would this also work with CS3? I have hundreds of files archived that were created in CS3. I have communicated with Adobe for several hours; he installed remotely CS6 hoping it would enable me to read my CS3 files -- nope, they cannot. And the Adobe tech gave up.

Initially I wanted to know why CC2015.5 cannot read my CS3 files, so the Adobe tech tried by installing CS6.

Does this mean all of my hundreds of files are now lost? Or is there another way that even the Adobe guy does not know about? I am not very computer savvy so this whole thing is  becoming a bit too complicated for me. Any suggestions? Thank you.

[Laubender]

Hi Ingeborg,

do you have CS3 and CS4 still installed somewhere?
If yes, you could try to:

1. Export InDesign Interchange format from CS3 ( *.inx files ) and try to open them in a later version.

2. Open the CS3 documents with CS4 and export IDML from there.

Recently I tested an old CS3 document with the latest CC 2017 version:

That was a mess.

It slowed down InDesign to a crawl.

That also happend as I tried to work with the document in CS5. Not with CS4. The problem was: All the text frames of one story had Vertical Justification "Justify" enabled. After setting Vertical Justification back to "Top" the problem was gone…

In this case it was no advantage to export to the interchange format INX or IDML. In fact I had some trouble with shifting objects that were positioned on the master pages after opening the INX file.

Just like the bug I described in reply 6 above.

// EDIT
// FWIW: Since this post by you was branched out to a new thread the reference to my reply 6 from 2012 can be found here:

Re: open cs4 file in cs6?

But you seem to suffer from a bigger problem.
You are not able to open the documents?

Did you get an error message of any kind?

If you like, you could upload one of your CS3 documents to Dropbox or a similar service and post a download link here so that we can look into this. Maybe there is a way…

Regards,
Uwe

[BobLevine]

You've replied to a 5-year old thread. I've branched it to a new conversation.

We need complete details on what is happening. Normally, CS3 files would open just fine in any later version of InDesign but you've given us virtually no information to go on. What operating system? What happens when you try to open these files?

[ingeborgk42450536]

First off, I am not very computer savvy -- so thank you for your patience!

I have an iMac and run OS 10.12.3 (Sierra).

The Photoshop files that I have archived on CDs were created on my old iMac using CS-3. Most of them are in .tif or .psd format -- no InDesign files.

I still have te CS-3 disk but it won't let me install it on this new machine.

When I got the new iMac, I started to subscribe to Photoshop CC2015.5.

Recently, I wanted to use some of my archived files and noticed that they were all locked and cannot be opened with CC2015.

All of those files show  a "lock" and the letters EXEC ac ross a black rectangle.

Error message #1:

When I tried to open one of the archived files that I have dragged onto my desktop, the error message reads "Could not complete your request because Photoshop does not recognize this type of file."

When I try to open an archived file directly from the CD, this error message pops up:

Error message #2:

Last login: Tue Mar  7 02:40:58 on console

ingeborg-kuhns-imac-2:~ ingekuhn$ /Volumes/MYWORKFILES/ROSES/Pink\ Roses\ \(also\ see\ zip\!\)/Backlit\ closeupfainting\ white ; exit;

-bash: /Volumes/MYWORKFILES/ROSES/Pink Roses (also see zip!)/Backlit closeupfainting white: cannot execute binary file

logout

Saving session...

...copying shared history...

...saving history...truncating history files...

...completed.

Deleting expired sessions...none found.

[Process completed]

I have spent some 2 hours yesterday with an Adobe technician who accessed my computer remotely. He installed CS-6, hoping it might read the CS-3 files -- but it did not work. Without further comment, the good man gave up and disappeared (disconnected), letting me hang in a vacuum....

I have hundreds of such archived files -- mostly photographs (it's my hobby). Does this mean that they are lost forever and I have to simply trash them all? I think it is most unfortunatel that Photoshop has not come up with a better solution  that lets us open all our files regardless which PS version we use.

Thank you.

[BobLevine]

Is this a Photoshop question? This is the InDesign forum!

[ingeborgk42450536]

yes, it appears to be a Photoshop question.

I don't know why my post ended up in  the InDesign forum -- mea culpa.

[BobLevine]

Moved to Photoshop forum. Hopefully someone here can help.

[ingeborgk42450536]

..and how do I get there, please?

[BobLevine]

As I said, I moved it for you.

[Dov Isaacs]

InDesign is engineered to open documents from all previous versions. I personally have InDesign documents from InDesign 1.0 that still open without a problem (other than some occasional line break differences) in the latest version of InDesign (i.e., CC2017).

That having been said, if your older InDesign documents had dependencies of plug-ins that no longer exist or other assets (such as fonts and placed content) that aren't available to you anymore, you could encounter problems.

As suggested, we need more information about your environment, error messages (if any) that you receive, etc. And if you could post a sample InDesign document that we could look at, we might be able to help get to the bottom of your problem.

          - Dov