I agree. There was no good reason for Claris to remove the non-Advanced version of the product other than to force small-scale users into buying a much more expensive product.
In my case, I bought it and paid $540 for version 19. But the way I see it, I only upgrade this package when I absolutely have to. My first upgrade (from version 4 to 11) was when a move from a PowerPC Mac to an Intel Mac left me no choice. My second (from version 11 to 19) was when a move to a new Mac (running Catalina, and therefore incompatible with 32-bit apps) left me no choice.
I was using version 11 for about 9 years (2011 until 2020). Even though Claris certainly did not support version 11 on later versions of macOS (up to Sierra), it continued working anyway.
If I can get another 9 years out of version 19, then it will be money well spent (averaging $60 per year). Of course, if they and/or Apple starts breaking things that force me into a more rapid upgrade cycle, I will probably regret that decision. But I’m not going to get upset over situations that have not yet occurred.
I’m in the same FileMaker boat. My databases are in version 12, and everything works just fine. I have no need for the more advanced features. I did spend a significant amount of time Excel, but I could not figure out a way to get it to drill down with even elementary sorting with multiple fields. Tap forms looks interesting, and I’m hoping for a solution that will allow me to import my databases and have them work and look like they have in FileMaker. And I’m really hoping for a minimal learning curve.
My ancient MacBook Pro is too elderly to handle TapForms5, but I will check it out when I do get a new model.
I was fortunate enough to find legit licenses for FM Pro 16 on Amazon for about $60+. They turned out to be kosher (my main concern) and have worked just fine ever since. Version 16 is 64-bit compatible so it allowed me to move to Catalina without losing all my old FMP databases, same for my wife. I don’t need any of the newer FMP features so $540 is overly steep. I bought another license like that for a relative a few weeks back so they could migrate to a new iMac (that came with Catalina of course), but at that time that same license was already at $160.
We had a couple threads on the topic a while back.
I just checked the TapForms forum and found a question from this past September that indicates there is a problem directly importing from FileMaker because FileMaker Pro uses its own proprietary file format. Apparently a CSV export from FileMaker can be imported to TapForms and that can also include images. I have never tried that, having gone to TapForms because FileMaker outpriced me years ago and I just started over. I hope you can make the move. I think you can get an earlier version of TapForms from their website. You could certainly contact the developer and ask for his guidance.
@gbdoc having tried the Excel option you have my sympathy lol. Why is everything MicroSoft so blasted complicated? I spent so many hours and finally walked away before I threw my computer against a wall groan. . .