Anyone ever experience this error when trying to open a Sib 6 file saved as a Sib 5 file in Sib 5? I'm running Sib 5.2.5.

It says: ";There was an error opening the score /users/chris/desktop/flow4.sib: std::exception";


Thanks in advance.

Are you getting that as soon as you try to open it? I've never had the problem.  Normally, you should be presented with a dialog like the attached image.  I'll do a little investigating and see what I can find.

It seems that somehow that file has managed to contract some sort of STD.  Does not bode well for your system. Better get any other computers tested that might have interacted with that file :-)

Ok, it seemed someone was having a similar problem on the Sibelius forum. Here was the reported fix for it:

[i]It turns out that your files aren't corrupted, but they do have an extraneous 34 bytes of data at the beginning.

You can fix these files for yourself if you're brave: open them in a hex editor like Hex Fiend (http://ridiculousfish.com/hexfiend/) and delete up to the . that precedes SIBELIUS in the hex representation of the score, as per the attached screenshot.

Then simply resave the file from Hex Fiend and it will open in Sibelius again.

What we need to determine is what's causing these extraneous bytes to be written at the start of your files. Do you have any software that might be responsible for this installed on your computer?[/i]

I've attached the screenshot mentioned in that post. Hope this helps!

Thanks Bryan. I'll throw back a couple of ";courage boosters"; and give this a go :)

Wow, Bryan! Your geek street cred just went up a few notches. Nice!! :)

Well, I did go to school for Information Systems.  Every now and then, my knowledge (or ability to find information) comes in handy :-)

Let us know how it works out for you, Chris.

I took a look using Hex Fiend, and while it didn't have the extraneous bytes before .sibelius, it does look like it's not converting over properly from Sibelius 6 format. See attached.

I'll have the guy sending this to me retry the Save As process. Can you guys vouch for saving as Sibelius 5 files in Sibelius 6?

Yep - had a client this past marching band season for whom I had to save as Sib5 files.  He never had any complaints about them not opening.

good work Bryan