The problem I am having with the DOS based CMS program is that I can not find any place in the program with the option to "Save As", or "Send To" or anything of that nature.
This isn't surprising, most Business software didn't have such features integrated into it- eg. My company has a ancient THEOS-based product that has been used since the 80's as well, and is in fact still active. We are only now moving to a Windows-based system in order to "modernize" the product (and move away from THEOS). It has no export capability in the original software, we had to write the appropriate export/import to get started on the Windows version.
In your case, The program might use a standard format; but it's also possible their data files are in their own format. If you are very lucky, they might use ISAM database files- if so there are numerous products that can read the data and import it into other database formats.
It is completely odd to me that there doesn't seem to be any way to take any of the CMS customer files and save them or send them anywhere.
This didn't become a common feature until much later. Programs typically tried to avoid making it easy to switch to any competitor product.
I wish I could find out how to save the database as .txt or as a csv file for Excel.
I would suggest not using Excel. Excel is not a database program- it is a spreadsheet. If you have 20+ years of data it might not work anyway.
The bigger problem is that even if you export the data from the old system to some general format, or even a modern database, it still isn't very useful, because it's unlikely that the new system will understand the layout of the database, so there would still be extensive rework needed to move it to the new format. The vendor you choose for the new product may be able to assist with this.
I did find a feature in the CMS program that allows you to use a copy window to paste portions of the screen to a windows clipboard.
That is a feature of Windows, actually.
Basically, here is what I would suggest:
1. Find out where the program is storing it's data files.
2. Determine what kind of files they are. If you share some of the filenames you find, we may be able to help determine the format being used.
3. Cross your fingers that it's not proprietary. Some products used completely undocumented data file formats that only the company knew the details of.
4.If it's a format that is interchangable, such as ISAM, which was a common database format for DOS programs, you should be able to find a importer or exporter that can move that ISAM data into another database.
If it's proprietary, you're in a pickle. You'd need to get something custom programmed to convert from that format.
