Using Filemaker for a Not-So-Pro

May 19, 2010 12:16 PM

My dad has inherited an old Filemaker Pro 7 (Mac) database. He needs to access and update the data... from his Windows machine, without Filemaker. Help!

My dad isn't a luddite, but isn't particularly tech-savvy ("How do I use the Wikipedia?"), and I know nothing about databases at all. He's been put in charge of maintaining a club history - names, addresses, activities etc of members, that stretches back at least a decade, and has been stored in Filemaker Pro (Mac). The most important use of this information is to print a weekly roster of participants, ranked in a certain way.

How can he get to the info from this old Mac file into something he can manipulate with Windows? Does he need to buy Filemaker for Windows (and will that work)? What's an easy (easier!) way for him to manage and maintain this information over time?

posted by nkknkk to computers & internet (9 answers total)

How much data are you talking about here?

If it's just him who will be maintaining this, it would likely be easier for him to print out a report of all the data and put it into a Google docs spreadsheet.

There may be an automated way to do that, and if you decide to keep it in Filemaker there may be an automated way to convert it to a Windows-readable format, but these would require some technical skills that it doesn't sound like he has.

Alternatively, can your father or his club hire a consultant to do this work for them?
posted by dfriedman at 12:22 PM on May 19, 2010

Incidentally, Filemaker is available for Windows: http://www.filemaker.com/products/filemaker-pro/?nav=products-pro

I don't know if this means you can open a Filemaker database created in the Mac environment in the Windows environment, but I would assume it does. Hopefully someone with first hand experience on this particular point can respond.
posted by dfriedman at 12:26 PM on May 19, 2010

Good questions. It's about 1000-1500 records. We do have a printout. We could enter them by hand, but it would be a big pain, introduce potential for errors, and would feel a little bit futile since most of the records are for inactive members (there are only 100 active or so). We could easily create a google doc for those active members, but for continuity's sake (this database is basically the historical record of the club), we are hoping to keep all the info together.

We could hire a consultant, but the club really has no money of its own. AskMe is my consultant! I'm still open to all suggestions!
posted by nkknkk at 12:29 PM on May 19, 2010

Can you find someone with a mac, export the thing into something like CSV, and then import it into a Google Docs spreadsheet? I'm usually against using a spreadsheet as a database, but here it sounds like an OK solution given what he has to do.
posted by The Bellman at 12:33 PM on May 19, 2010

This can be converted to a spreadsheet if he has Microsoft Office (Excel).
Or saved as tab-separated text and opened in Word. Which would require some finessing.

Personally, I love Filemaker Pro.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 12:36 PM on May 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Yeah, your best bet here is to obtain a copy of Filemaker, load the database, export the DB out as a .csv or tab-separated and then load that export into something like a DabbleDB or Google Spreadsheets.

Of course, the big problem here is the first thing. If the file isn't too large, you could send it to me and I'll flip it for you to .csv and email it back to you. Contact me via my email in my profile.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 12:42 PM on May 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

The FP7 data format is still used by the latest version of FileMaker (11), and is cross-platform, so it should open on Windows just fine. You can get a 30 day trial of FileMaker Pro for free, which should be enough time to export the data it to XLS/CSV format and import it into Excel/Open Office/Google Docs. (Hint: If you want the export to include field names as the first row, use 'Merge' format.)

FileMaker is a good tool for exactly this sort of application (Making it easy to manage data for small organizations) but it sounds like $299 may be more than the club wants to shell out.
posted by usonian at 1:32 PM on May 19, 2010

I'm not sure how the current trial version is crippled beyond the 30 day time bomb -- and it may not be -- but previous trial versions of FMP were limited to 50 records. Export and conversion support may also be hamstrung. No harm in downloading the trial and checking it out, but it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't handle the whole file and/or didn't convert it.

Also, I think we are all making the assumption that your current FMP7 database is a flat file with a single table structure. If if has related tables for phone numbers and/or email addresses, your export-to-CSV (or better, "Merge" as usonian suggested) will only contain the first related child record for each parent record. This can be overcome with a calculation, but I just want to bring it up as something to be aware of.
posted by mosk at 1:57 PM on May 19, 2010

Also, while I agree that a spreadsheet might work well for you, I'd mention that OpenOffice has a database component as well.

The suggestions above about getting the trial version of Filemaker and exporting the data are great. Once you've done that, you can try loading the data into a variety of free tools - Google Spreadsheets, OpenOffice Calc, OpenOffice Base, and anything else you find that looks interesting - and see what's easiest for you and your dad to work with.

While you've still got the Filemaker trial running, you might want to make screenshots or printouts of the various forms that have been built with Filemaker, to give you a starting point for whatever you'll want to do with your new tool
posted by kristi at 10:59 AM on May 22, 2010