Saving for a Previous Version

You can save VIs, LabVIEW projects, and project libraries for a previous version of LabVIEW to make upgrading LabVIEW convenient and to help you maintain files in more than one version of LabVIEW when necessary.

Note  To save packed project libraries for a previous version of LabVIEW, save the files in the packed library for a previous version and rebuild the packed library with the desired version of LabVIEW.

Complete the following steps to save a hierarchy of VIs, project, or project library for a previous version of LabVIEW.

  1. For the top-level VI in a hierarchy of VIs, select File»Save for Previous Version to display the Save for Previous Version dialog box. For a project, select File»Save for Previous Version in the Project Explorer window. For a project library, right-click the library file in the Project Explorer window and select Save for Previous Version from the shortcut menu, or open the project library and select File»Save for Previous Version.
  2. Select the version of LabVIEW for which to save the VIs, project, or project library from the LabVIEW Version pull-down menu.
    Note  When you save a VI hierarchy, project, or project library that uses a LabVIEW toolkit that has provided LabVIEW with a list of version information, you can select which version of the toolkit to save for in the Toolkit Version field.
  3. Click the Save button to display a file dialog box.
  4. Select the directory where you want to save the VI hierarchy, project, or project library.
  5. Click the Save button.
    Note Note  If you save a password-protected VI for a previous LabVIEW version, you must enter the password.

If a VI, project, or project library uses functionality that is not available in the previous version, LabVIEW saves as much as it can and produces a report of what it cannot convert. The report appears immediately in the Save for Previous Warning Summary dialog box.

Click the Show Details button in the Save for Previous Warning Summary dialog box to open the Load and Save Warning List dialog box and review the details of each warning. You also can click the Ignore button to acknowledge these warnings and close the summary dialog box. Click the Save to File button in the Load and Save Warning List dialog box to save the warnings to a text file you can review later.

You also can use the Save:For Previous method to save a VI for a previous version of LabVIEW programmatically, the Save For Previous method (Project) to save a LabVIEW project for a previous version of LabVIEW programmatically, and the Save:For Previous method (Library) to save a project library for a previous version of LabVIEW programmatically.