Updated procedure for converting GrandView files to Inspiration files

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Posted by Cassius
Oct 30, 2011 at 06:02 PM

10/30/11:

The best approach (so far) that I’ve found for converting GV files to Inspiration is:

1) In the GV file, switch to “Outline View” and turn both “Columns” and “Category Display” OFF.
2) Expand EVERYTHING, then highlight EVERYTHING.
3) Choose the labeling style “Outline/Labels/Get Style/Indentation w/no labels.”
4) Export the file to “PA -Paragraph” format. (File/Export/Paragraph)
5) Pick a file name and add the extension “.rtf” Note which folder the file is in.
6) Open the exported file in Inspiration. Inspiration will automatically convert the “.rtf” file to an Inspiration file.

To keep the GV file the way it was before you made these changes, do not close the file using the GrandView “Quit.” Instead, with the GrandView window displayed, close it in Windows using one of the following:
Press the combination ALT-SPACEBAR, then choose CLOSE (works in XP, may work in others)
OR
Open the Windows Task Manager, choose GrandView and choose “End Task.”

FOR SAFETY, do not delete your GrandView file. The conversion might have errors or might not have copied everything.

The one possible difficulty may be the limited size of each Inspiration note. I don’t know what might happen if the conversion process encounters one that is too long.

Posted by jimspoon
May 6, 2023 at 12:42 PM

Thank you Cassius. Last night I decided I would try to convert many of my old .GV files to more current formats. It seems that there’s no batch converter program out there. So I have to open up each .GV file in Grandview and use its File > Export function.

I am running Windows 10 64-bit on one computer and Windows 11 64-bit on another. On the Windows 10 computer I tried running GV under DOSBOX. Many keyboard shortcuts that are standard in Windows, for things like activating menus, opening files, selecting text, etc., do not work in Grandview. File access error messages kept appearing. File > Open is a bit tricky. Use the down arrow to scroll down the list of files until you see the file or directory you want to load. When I tried F10 > Outline > Labels > Get Style to try to turn off labels for export, I was unable to open the GV.LBL file that contains the label styles. Also I discovered that if you try File > Export > Paragraph, it will export only the outline items that are currently highlighted. So to export the whole outline you have to highlight the entire outline first. To do this you must put your cursor at the start of the outline, then press F6, then highlight all the outline items with the arrow keys. There is no “Select All” function in GV. Ctrl+A doesn’t work. Ctrl+Shift+End does work to extend the highlight to the end of file, so that helps. Immediately after doing this, use File > Export > Paragraph as described by Cassius.

I tried GrandViewforWinV1 as described in another thread here. It runs GV under Vdos-lfn. I had problems moving the window around, and problelms restoring a minimized GV window. I tried changing the “config.txt” file in the Vdos directory to uncomment the “frame = on” line, trying to get the standard Windows frame around the DOS window, with the usual minimize and restore buttons in the upper right corner, but this did not work.

I am having better luck running GV under DOSBOX-X (https://dosbox-x.com/). I am not getting the file access errors, and I can move the Window around using standard Windows methods. Also the mouse cursor is not trapped inside the DOSBOX window as with regular DOSBOX.

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