FileMaker Pro has been the database of Mac offices, schools, clubs and collectors for thirty years, and plenty of member lists, stock books, catalogues and mailing lists are still sitting in .fp5 and .fp7 files. Today's FileMaker is a paid Claris subscription, and it does not open .fp5 or .fp3 files at all: Claris's converter for them only came with FileMaker 7 to 11. This page reads the file itself, with fmptools (Evan Miller's open-source FileMaker reader) running in your browser, and shows every table with its fields and records, ready to search, sort and save in formats any spreadsheet or database opens. It is free to use, with no account and no upload limit, and it runs entirely in your browser: nothing is uploaded, and while the page stays open, a feature you have already used keeps working offline.
- Can I open a .fp5 file without FileMaker?
- Yes. Current FileMaker versions cannot open .fp5 files (Claris's converter for them was in FileMaker 7 to 11), but this page reads them directly. Its tables and records are shown as FileMaker stored them, and you can save them as Excel, CSV or JSON to use in any spreadsheet or database, or to import into a new FileMaker file. It has been checked on files from FileMaker Pro 3, 5, 7 and 12, and gives the same tables, fields and records as fmptools' own command-line converter.
- What is not shown?
- Only the data: tables, fields and records. Layouts, scripts, value lists, relationships, privileges and calculation formulas are stored in parts of the file the reader does not decode. Calculation fields whose results FileMaker stores show those results; unstored calculations and summary fields have nothing stored, so they come out empty. Pictures, PDFs and other files kept in container fields are not extracted. In .fp7 and .fmp12 files the field types are not read, so every value is shown as text, just as FileMaker stored it.
- My FileMaker file has a password. Will it open?
- Usually, yes. The reader does not use FileMaker's accounts and passwords: it reads the records stored in the file directly, and FileMaker only keeps them encrypted when a file has been saved with Encryption at Rest (an option since FileMaker 13). Such files are refused, because without the encryption password their contents are unreadable, and the page cannot use that password either: open the file in FileMaker with it and export the records, or save a copy without encryption. We have not had a password-protected file without encryption to test, so if yours does not open, please use "Report a problem" below the tool.
- How are dates, numbers and repeating fields saved?
- Values come out as FileMaker stored them: dates in the order the file was set up for (such as 3/14/1998, or 14/03/1998 in Europe), and numbers as they were typed, with any thousands separators or decimal commas. In the Excel workbook, values that are plainly numbers become numbers you can add up; everything else stays text. A repeating field's values are put on separate lines in one cell in Excel and CSV, and kept as a list in JSON.
- The file opened but its tables are empty. Why?
- Many FileMaker solutions are split into two or more files: one with the layouts and scripts (the interface) and one with the records (often called "data"). The interface file has tables but no records. Open the other FileMaker files that came with it. A file whose tables really were emptied in FileMaker also shows no records.
- Is my FileMaker file uploaded anywhere?
- No. The file is read by this browser tab, and the Excel, CSV and JSON files are made in it too. The only things downloaded are the parts of this page itself, including the reader.