Get your records out of old FileMaker 5 and 6 files
Open an .fp5 or .fp3 database here to see its fields and rows, then save each table as an Excel workbook or a CSV file. It all happens in this browser tab. Your file is not uploaded anywhere.
Current FileMaker stopped opening these files a long time ago, and FileMaker Pro 11, the last version that could convert them, is no longer sold. A lot of membership lists, stock books and collection catalogues from around 2000 are still sitting in them.
Drop .fp5 or .fp3 files here
Pick several at once if you have them. In FileMaker 5 and 6 every table was a file of its own.
No file to hand? Open a sample, a real FileMaker Pro 5 file the U.S. Geological Survey published: 56 Alaska mine and prospect records.
What it reads, and what it leaves behind
The page reads what FileMaker stored for each record: every field's value, as it was typed in. It does not run FileMaker, so anything FileMaker worked out on screen or drew on a layout is not in the file to read.
Comes out
- Every record, with one column per field and the field names as headings.
- Long text fields in full, line breaks included.
- Repeating fields, one column for each repetition that holds anything.
- Stored calculation results, as FileMaker last saved them.
- Accented letters. The page guesses Mac Roman or Windows text and you can switch if they look wrong.
- Older .fp3 files (FileMaker Pro 3 and 4) the same way, and .fp7 and .fmp12 files from later versions.
Stays behind
- Layouts, scripts, value lists and relationships. A portal showed records from another file; open that file too and its records come out as a table of their own.
- Pictures and documents in container fields.
- Unstored calculations and summary fields, which FileMaker worked out each time it showed them.
- Layout formatting. Values come out as typed, so 4/26/99 stays 4/26/99 and is text in Excel. Plain numbers in number fields do become numbers.
- .fmp12 files with encryption at rest, which FileMaker added in version 13.
Your files stay on your computer
The reading happens inside this tab, in a background worker the page starts, so a big file does not lock the page up while it is read. The page has no server to send your file to, and its security policy only lets it talk to this site. Once it has loaded you can switch off the internet and it carries on working.
Privacy has the details, including the exact policy the site is sent with.
Price
Looking is free. Open as many files as you like, go through every table's fields and its first 20 rows, and download those rows as Excel or CSV to check them.
The full export, every row of every table, is US$29, paid once, with a full refund within 30 days if it does not do the job. The price page has the terms and where to paste a licence code you already have.
How it reads the files
FileMaker never published the .fp5 format. The reading code here is my JavaScript port of fmptools, Evan Miller's free command-line reader (MIT licence), with the record notes from Daniel Schwarz's fp5dump. I compiled the original C program and ran both on 38 sample files, from the U.S. Geological Survey and from fmptools' own tests: every value matches byte for byte. Where this page does more on purpose, it keeps the leading spaces FileMaker stored (its own exports keep them), and it reads repetitions and fields numbered above 127, which fmptools skips in .fp5 files.
The page keeps the whole file in memory while it works, so a 500 MB database wants a computer with a couple of gigabytes free. If yours does not open, or comes out wrong, write to me at [email protected] with the message the page showed. Please do not send the file itself unless you are allowed to share it.