Updating very old imatch system

[vincepachiano]

I've taken a long break from photography and iMatch.  I can see some old backups on an external drive with a "imd4" suffix dated Jan 2011. I also see a "imatch_lic_3_6_0_118.exe" file. Is there any way to see what version I last used, and if I purchase the current iMatch, will it be able to read and update my very old database?

[Mario]

.IMD4 was the legacy database format used by IMatch 3 back in the day.
3.6.118 is the last IMatch 3 version released. You have that one on your hard disk. No idea if this version still runs reliably and safely on modern Windows versions.

An automatic database converter for IMatch 3 databases was provided by me with IMatch 5, IMatch 2016, IMatch 2017, 2018 and 2019 - until IMatch went 64-bit only 5 years ago. Components used by the old database converter were not available for 64-bit Windows versions.

If you want to start working with IMatch again, I suggest you create a new database with IMatch 2023 and index your files.
So much has changed with metadata and file formats over the past 10 years, trying to convert/salvage anything from a legacy 3.x version of IMatch is not worth the trouble.

See the IMatch in One Page and IMatch Learning Center for some impressions on how IMatch has evolved since IMatch 3.

[6b6561]

I was in the same situation three weeks ago but with the difference that I still had the old 3.6 version installed on my Windows 10 desktop. I followed the instructions in https://www.photools.com/community/index.php/topic,8612.msg99753.htm and successfully exported my old categories and got those imported into into the new version.

Why not try to install the old version, restore the database, run a category export, install the free trial version of the new IMatch and import?

I can tell you that it was definitively worth the effort to upgrade! The new version is so much better in all ways than the very old 3.6 version.

[Mario]

Thanks for providing additional information.
If categories are relevant, this is the way to go. Similar, the old properties (title & description) can be exported and imported in the same way.

Note that official support for IMatch 3 was discontinued in 2016.