Is it possible to do a "test run" migration from version 4.5 to 2017?

I'm new to sage, and have a customer that wants to upgrade from 4.5 to 2017.  I'm doing some reading of the documentation, and it mentions pre-migration and parallel migration utilities, converting the data to 2017, and migrating it to 2017 version.  My assumption is that once I work through that pre-migration data conversion, the existing 4.5 system will be unusable?  Is there a way to do a "test run" migration? Would backup/restore of the MAS90 folder help, i.e. backup the folder, do the data conversion and migration to the new, restore the old MAS90 folder so users can still access production system while testing the new in parallel?  Thanks for any insights you can provide.

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    Pre-migration does a quick check and advises on data preparation activities you may need to perform.  As long as they are not on Premium / SQL, you can do your test migration from a folder copy of your v4.5 data.

    If you are new to Sage, performing an upgrade unassisted is ambitious.  You'd be better off getting the customer's Sage Partner / reseller to guide you.  There may be customizations to the system, which won't be covered by the Sage documentation.  Best practices / tips / tricks... experience matters with Sage 100.

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    " once I work through that pre-migration data conversion, the existing 4.5 system will be unusable"  This is not correct.  All the migration really does is copy the data over to the new system. The advantages of parallel migration is that you can still work in the live version until the new install is tested and ready.  I would make a copy of the live install to be on the safe side but I rarely if ever hear of anything going wrong.

  • 0 in reply to BigLouie

    Based on what I was reading, I assumed it did a conversion of data to 2017 "format" prior to it migrating, which led me to think it would not be usable in the 4.5 system.  Thanks for clarifying.