Are your older files safe? We’re talking here not about viruses or disk failure, but just not having software that can read the data any more.
This can make you lose important information.
Sometimes this happens because the only application that opens the files won’t run under the latest operating system. If the company that created the application went out of business years ago or abandoned it, you could be stuck with no way to open the files.
In other cases, the latest version of an application doesn’t support old versions of the format any more. Microsoft Office is a prime example. The current release can’t open the oldest versions of the Word format. With some format versions that aren’t quite as old, its default is to refuse to open them, but you can change that setting. The reason it does this is that some old file versions have known security risks, and a spammer might trick you into downloading a file that exploits the issue.
To avoid file obsolescence, you should periodically look at files that are in old formats. If you still need them, you can open them and re-save them as the latest version.
Another safety measure is to “print” files as PDF. PDF is a well-known, stable format, and it’s not going to become obsolete for many years. Old versions are fully compatible with new ones. You can’t edit those files, but at least you’ll always be able to read them.
It’s difficult to keep track of all your files this way, but you should review files which contain critical information at least once every couple of years and check if they’re in danger of becoming unusable. If they are, you can migrate them to a newer format while it’s still possible.
