Password help- No password on old version (FM6) now needed on FM11 converted file

If a pre-conversion file has a password defined that has full access to the file already, a default Admin account is not automatically created.

http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/647
Converting A File That Has Access Privileges Already Defined

If a pre-conversion file has a password defined that has full access to the file already, a default Admin account is not automatically created.

If a "no password" password is detected in the original file during the conversion process, it is converted to the Guest account and made active in FileMaker Pro 7 and later.

Unless a pre-FileMaker Pro 7 had an auto login password stored; no default login will be assigned under File Options to a converted file that has access privileges defined.  A login dialog box will be presented each time the file is opened, just like in the previous version.  If a file had a password stored for auto-login before conversion that password and appropriate settings would be retained after the conversion process.

Passwords were not case sensitive in pre-FileMaker Pro 7 file but they are in FileMaker Pro 7 and later.  Access privileges that were defined with upper and lower case letters in pre-FileMaker Pro 7 will be enforced in FileMaker Pro 7 and later.  For example, Assume a password of "Orange" was defined in a previous version of FileMaker.  When logging in this file in a previous version of FileMaker you could type in "orange" or "ORANGE" (or any combination of upper and lower case letters) and gain access to the file.  After conversion, neither of these passwords will be accepted.  In this case, "Orange" will be the only valid password.

Passwords will be brought over from the original file and converted into accounts where the account name and password are the same.  The end-user will be able to login to a converted file using only their password (leaving the account name blank) just like they did in the original file. This is supported primarily as a means by which FileMaker Pro 7 and later is migrating old accounts from previous versions of FileMaker.

It is strongly encouraged that after conversion, any user who has full access to the file modify the converted accounts so that the account names and passwords are no longer the same.  After doing so, the end-user will only be able to login using their new account name and password.

After a file(s) has been converted, all capabilities of a particular password in the original database(s) will be the same in the converted database.  For example, if a password in the original database prevented a user from designing a layout, then the end-user will not be able to change anything regarding layouts in the converted file.  If an end-user was not able to edit the contents of a particular field in a particular layout, they still won't be able to when the file is converted.

The privileges and group settings of the old password (pre-conversion) will be converted into new privileges sets.  The new names for Privileges Sets will be based on the group(s) it is associated with.  During conversion, FileMaker will try and produce the minimal number of privilege sets required.  Not all old group settings will be mapped to individual new privilege sets because individual passwords may have belonged to multiple groups.  For example...

A pre-conversion file has the following groups and passwords defined...

And the following passwords were associated with the following groups:

When this file is converted in FileMaker Pro 7 and later, the following Privilege Sets and Accounts are created from the original file...

Because the "NoDelete" and the "NoDelete2" passwords define the same set of access privileges in the original file, their defined access privileges were combined into one "Privilege Set" in FileMaker Pro 7 and later called "group3/group4 2."

As mentioned previously, Privilege Set names are based on the corresponding group names from the pre-conversion file.  Privilege Set names must be unique, therefore during the conversion process an ascending number is appended to the end of the Privilege Set name if it would create a duplicate name.  In the example above the conversion process created a Privilege Set called "group3/group4" based on the groups associated with the "NoEdit" password.  Further on down the access privileges list, the conversion process encounters another instance of Group 3 and Group 4 associated with the "NoDelete" password.  Because this would create a duplicate Privilege Set, the conversion process creates a new Privilege Set called "group3/group4 2."

If a group doesn’t have a password assigned to it, that group will not get converted in the .fp7 format.

http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/571
Changes that occur to your passwords during file conversion

http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/750/~/conversion-%26-migration%3A-things-to-think-about-before-converting-your-file%28s%29-to

Things to think about before converting your file(s) to FileMaker Pro 7 through FileMaker Pro 11     Updated: May 11, 2012

Try entering "admin" as the account name and leave the password box empty and see if that logs you in. If that works, go to File Options and specify "Admin" and No password in the "log in using" section.

If that does not work, I suggest re-opening your FM6 copy while holding down the option (mac) or shift (windows) key. Filemaker won't manufacture a password out of thin air during the conversion, but maybe your original file auto-entered a password each time it opened. It would then look like it didn't have a password when it really did. If so, holding down that key while opening it, will force it to ask for the password.

"Jeff Ellis" is the username as controlled by what you set up in preferences (and the initial user name gets set up when you installed).

You can replace Jeff Ellis with Admin, then leave the password box empty and try to open the file.

You can use Manage | Security to assign a password to your file.

If you keep "Jeff Ellis" as your user name in Preferences, create a new account named "Jeff Ellis". Select [Full Access] as your privlege set and then give the account a password.

You can learn more about manage | security in FileMaker help, but the above steps are probably all you need to add a full access password to your file where the admin name is entered for you. (fileMaker enters your user name as the account name when you open a password protected file that is not set to automatically enter that password for you in File OPtions.

A few suggestions:

BEFORE you experiment with Manage | Security settings, save a copy of your file with no password specified. That way, if you goof and lock yourself out of your own file, you can delete that copy and use the unlocked backup copy.

Account names are not case sensitive. Passwords ARE case sensitive. Be careful to enter passwords with the exact same capitalization that you used when setting up the account for that password.

It's a very good idea to either save an unlocked backup copy of your file to a flash drive that you then toss into a safe or other secure location or to write down your account/password and put that piece of paper into secure storage. Every now and then we see a post here from a user that locked themselves out of their own file and regaining access to that file is neither simple nor cheap.

I know this is an OLD thread but I wanted to say thanks to David anyway - I've spent the last 20 minutes trying to access an old FMP 5.5 file which had been converted to FMP 12. I could log into the file with the original password and do most things I needed EXCEPT change security settings in preparation for re-deployment. This was an admin password in the 5.5 solution but apparently not after conversion.

What I was missing was that during conversion an admin-level user is created with the old password as both the username AND password. Success! I am back with many thanks to David and this very old thread.