Why doesn't my 2016b app open in 2018a app designer?

I have an app that I wrote in 2016b that will not open using the 2018a app designer.

I get the following:

I'm not sure how I can get the file to open. There is no 'code' that I use anywhere in my code and there are no fields for any of my objects called 'code'.

None of the previous questions I found had an app that didn't open.

Answer 1

[Cris LaPierre]

App designer is under active development. I don't know why in this specific case it's not opening, but as improvements and new features are made, it is possible there are some incompatabilities that cannot be corrected.

[K]

Thank you for your response. Does this mean that it is possible that it'll never be compatible or there is something ongoing that may make this possible in the future?

[Cris LaPierre]

EDIT: See Chris Portal's comment below. Summary: contact technical support.

App designer was first released in 16a. My suspicion is that it will never be compatible. I noticed the same thing with apps I created when it first came out. I'm afraid you'd have to recreate it

[Walter Roberson]

There were incompatibilities in the first release . I seem to recall that the next release had some workarounds so it might be possible to import in the next release and write that out and import that in a later release .

[K]

Thanks for the info! This is unfortunate

[Chris Portal]

App Designer is fully backwards compatible, so all older apps should open in a newer release. That said, there were patches for the earlier releases that fixed some serialization bugs, so it‘s possible those may not have been applied along the way. My suggestion would be to contact Tech Support and if you can provide your MLAPP file, the engineering team should be able to rectify the issue so it can open in 18a.

[K]

Thanks Chris, I appreciate it, but I remade it yesterday and just copied the code over. It wasn't too difficult outside of the aesthetics.

[Chris Portal]

K, I’m glad you‘re back on your feet at least. Do you have the original MLAPP file by any chance? If you do and it’s not too much trouble, you could send it in via support and say Chris Portal requested it. Would help us confirm what is up with it to see if there’s a bug somewhere.

Service Request

Thanks!

[K]

Just submitted:

Case number is 03477915

[Chris Portal]

Yes, the engineering team got your case and the app. Tech Support has logged a bug to investigate and make sure a fix is already in place or get one in for the next release. Thanks!