Dear @admin, my recently departed Dad created Panorama classic databases that we need to access to settle his estate. He has Panorama Enterprise and I know the server name. When I open his old Panorama on his old computer I can see the databases but when I open them, I get a very long text window stating that his trial is over. I have updated the registration. I have bought a new Panorama license in my name. I guess from reading on the forums that I must first convert to Panorama 6 so maybe my question is how do I obtain Panorama 6? I could really use advice to retrieve the data - thankfully, while Dad used Panorama he could have used a flatfile spreadsheet so these databases are very simple - I actually can extract the words using simpletext but of course that involves a lot of re-keying to recreate a spreadsheet. Any advice is most welcome. Yours, Betsy
If you read the instructions on that “long text window”, you’ll see that there is a way to continue using the software temporarily. It will be annoying, because you’ll have to click the blue letters each time that appears, but it will still run.
If your Dad had Panorama 5.5 or earlier, then yes, you’ll need a copy of Panorama 6. However, if you have a modern Macintosh, you won’t be able to run Panorama 6. But if you can get a computer that it will run on, it’s still possible to download the old software from:
Note to future readers, this page may be removed from the web site in the near future. Panorama 6 was discontinued many years ago.
Betsy, If you have the old computer that opened the Pan 5 files, that’s all you need - despite the “Free Trial is Over” message. If you have recently bought a license, that would be for PanX which you don’t need - but is nice to have.
As Jim mentioned, you can still open the Pan5 databases even though the trial period has expired. I’m guessing that what you want to do is Export the data therein so you can import it into another database (using your PanX license), or into Excel if you are more comfortable with that application.
What skill level do you have? Are you comfortable clicking on menus and making choices? Do you know how to make a copy of a file? Before you try any of the following, make a copy of the file and work on that - so you’ll still have the original should something go wrong.
Once you open the database, make sure you have all the records selected by clicking on a Search menu and choosing “Select All”. Once you have all the records Selected you can click on the File menu and choose SaveAs. From there, there’s an option to save as Text (.txt). When you choose that, you’ll have an option to select which fields you want to export. I’m guessing there’s an “All” option for that as well. I believe the last choice will be if you want the first row of data to be the field names. Opting for that can be useful and the field name row can always be deleted later.
Finally, you have to name the file and designate where you want it - like the desktop or anywhere else. That part is like any other file you make on a Mac - like if you wrote a letter with an app, when done you’d Save It and that action requires you name the file and save it somewhere - that’s the same with Saving a Pan 5 file as Text.
Without knowing what’s in the file, and how the data will be used, I can’t advise on what to do with it once it’s out of Pan5.
Hi everyone, I want to thank people for their kind responses privately and through this forum. Last night my brother figured out how to extract data from Panorama as tab-delimited text. I have decided to import it into a spreadsheet program that I’ve used for a long time. Truth is, Dad never used Panorama as a database, only as a set of overlapping spreadsheets. As useful as hew found the software for his collecting hobby for decades, we are stepping away from it as it is far more sophisticated than our needs require. You guys are great! Kind regards, Betsy