I am migrating my old Panorama files (v6 and earlier) to version X. In the process, I have just encountered a problem: two files with a visible Panorama 6 icon force the program to shut down every time I try to open them. I looked at the Info (using Finder), and noticed that both were created and modified on Wednesday, December 31, 1969, at 8 pm (Impossible, I know). Can this be the reason Panorama - now - can’t open these files? What should I do to retrieve the content of both files?
The first thing to try is to change the creation and modification dates to something acceptable. Open the Terminal app and then type this in:
touch -mt 201811280000
Note that there is a space after the above Terminal command. Now go to the Finder and drag your file into the Terminal window and press the Return key. This should change the date to today and you can try opening the file once more.
Thanks. However, although I was able to change the dates with the command you shared, and the SetFile one as well, the files with the new dates still won’t open with Panorama 6 and force the program to crash.
Well, apparently more than the dates got corrupted. Do you by any chance have a backup file somewhere that is still useable? If not, you might be able to gather some or all of the data using a text editor to open the file and search for things. If there is only small amounts of data you should be able to get most of it. As I recall from my former days of rummaging through Panorama files you should also be able to find the text from procedures as well. Forms will be lost however.
One last thing to try is to use the openplain command to try opening the files without any .Initialize procedures running or windows opening except the data sheet. If this fails - well, no easy road from here.
Panorama couldn’t care less what the file date is, it doesn’t even read that information. So that’s not the reason your files won’t open. It sounds like the files were corrupted, possibly overwritten by some other program. In that case, there is nothing to retrieve. Just because a file has a Panorama icon doesn’t mean that there is actually valid Panorama content in the file. Hopefully you have another backup somewhere.
By the way, it’s not impossible for the file date to be 1969 or anything else – a rogue program can set the date to anything it wants. This can also be done with the touch shell command that Gary mentioned.