I thought I'd put this out there in case it's useful.
We loaded a Sage V12 backup onto a new PC running Windows 7 & Sage V18 and all is fine. I had read that the data may have to be rebuilt by Sage to run on V18 at a cost of around £200 so were a bit 'will it won't it work'.
The rule is if you go forward more than 6 versions you need to convert.
V13 will not restore to V20 for example but will restore to V19
You should not be paying £200 to get it done, I charge for half an hour unless it is a huge data set or multiple conversions (I had to convert V8 for use on V20 this week!)
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Bruce is right... for someone with multiple versions of Sage, (and anyone charging £200 should have that!!), it is usually a simple case of using the versions to "leap frog" to where you want to go. So V12 can be restored and converted into V16, then be re-backed up at that version, and then be taken up to V20 from there. That's what I do anyway, takes about half hour, if that!