I know this isn't the support forum, but I've had good luck with this tool: http://downgrader.elements.tv/

Since what this tool is effectively doing is just changing a version number, it's odd to me that Premiere doesn't offer this as a "Save Project As" option. It's obviously possible and not particularly difficult to do, just annoying.

My suggestion would be to add it as functionality into Premiere, and hit us with a "text and effects may not transfer properly" message before saving. I really think this would save a lot of headache for a lot of users... myself included!

Ok,
So you are working on a project and the title is apocalypse now and it's 1979.
And 22 years later you want to open the project again. Because you want to make some minor changes to the story.
This should be possible why?
Because it's a movie and it's edited in a editing machine.
The time and effort that went into the project is big.
And why is this relevant for the future?
Because the things we do today will be revisited by people in the future.
Thats why it's important that one of the main editing systems we use should be
able to open the projects and convert them (AE does it).
It's simply careless to not think about it in the first place.
Careless and nearsighted.

I'm going to take this opportunity to ask why we need to install a whole different version, or have a different computer just to read an xml file with one line of difference in it? The version line.

This is a way to force people to use their newest version, and keep paying them for it. It is simply a business model nothing more.

Imagine if you have an Aftereffect 2018 it is doing the job, but if you collaborate with someone who uses the newest version of AE, you can't actually open the project files in your 2018 version,

This either forces you to upgrade or use their subscription solutions, either way this is $$$ for Adobe...

I continue to see replies on all Adobe forums from the Adobe admins thanking us and they'll take it under advisement. In meantime here's a band-aid. This goes on year after year ever since you created the Creative Cloud. It's nonesense.
Stop making it so hard to work with your core programs! Just created a project today, now I can't reopen because it forces me to use the newer version. When I do, now the project has bugs and I had to start from scratch!
Over and over and over and over again you continue to destroy your name within this industry.

How about you take that under advisement.

Just a thought but is Adobe working on too many products simultaneously and ignoring their core productivity apps as a result? One example: the recent inability to use the export function for audio tracks directly into Audition has killed our pipeline. Maybe this should be a top priority since it was a core function of Pr which worked right up to 2020. Again, just a thought.

"while this is a rather critical and large change to the way the application works'

If that is the case then is something wrong with the way your application works. The basic elements of a sequence, cuts, tracks basic transitions, should gracefully move from product version to product version. I wonder if you are tying properties of the clips to the sequence rather than applying them to the clips.

I mean, I can open Media Composer projects from the 90s in current version of MC. And send them to people still using AVBV and Meridian systems, who can also open them.

It's not a biggie if certain filters/effects don't work.

This. It's not like we're trying to open new versions with something created in 1957. It's pretty obnoxious and tone deaf.

How do you do a parallel install?

Honestly, the most simple solution to this is to just have Premiere be able to convert newer project files to be compatible with older versions of Premiere. If I open a newer project in an older version, instead of just telling me "You can't open this."... give me an option to convert it so that it's openable, even if that means getting rid of some features in the project or whatever it would entail. Just offer some kind of automatic solution so that your customers who need some kind of solution don't have to go searching for workarounds. It really shouldn't be so complicated.

It could function as more of an import than an open. Some new features and effects won't work, but the majority of the core edit information doesn't change year to year.

A legacy save ability would be nice (Illustrator can do this, After Effects too to a lesser extent), but to truly alleviate the issue for most users, we really need to be able to open newer versions without having to open in the latest version. Ideally we can just open the project (probably being prompted to re-save somewhere new like when we open old projects) and get warnings about anything that doesn't translate. Not perfect, but an improvement over having projects be stuck in the versions they started in. It could also be a separate utility since that wouldn't require an update to all previous versions of Premiere.

Bigger picture, it would be good for project types to change only when absolutely necessary, not just with every version release.

Backwards compatibility is always a good thing. Far too rare, unfortunately.

@Paul Rubin
Below is a link to direct downloads for Adobe CC 2015. In the sidebar you can find direct download links from 2018 all the way back to CS6. I had the same issue years ago and Adobe's own Dave Helmly linked to the website--I bookmarked it and have had to go back to it several times for previous versions. Hope this helps.

https://prodesigntools.com/adobe-cc-2015-direct-download-links.html

I appreciate that we can download previous version of Premiere Pro in attempts to resolve these issues. What I don't appreciate is what a tease that function is because many of us need older versions that aren't listed as available for download. Case in point, I need the 2015 version and I spent hours of my day on the phone and typing online with Adobe technical support only to be ultimately sent to this board and nothing else. It seems for years many of us can't open our older files because Adobe has decided to only make certain previous versions available for download. I take some responsibility for stupidly ignoring the advice of friends who told me not to update my Adobe Premiere Pro. Also this notion presented above by the admin of keeping an older version on 1 of 2 editing computer is laughable. My laptop is my second editing computer - IN AN EMERGENCY. Even then I doubt I could edit much on it. I wonder how much money people have lost from Adobe's seemingly short-sighted thinking when it comes to their updates. People use this editing software for their jobs - their livelihoods. Surprised there hasn't been a class action lawsuit yet.

In an ideal world we could just update to the latest release and let the project update. But we've experienced so many old bugs being reintroduced and new bugs to features already working in previous version that we systematically have to hold on new releases. A postproduction facility like ours cannot spare to find out the problems as we go and debug all day. This is a plague almost every Premiere release as been affected for years and if it's not taken care of by the team very soon, we'll have to look at other solutions for the perennity of our business.

Adobe is full of it! here is absolutely NO programmatic reason that Adobe projects must be locked to specific versions except for Adobe wanting to keep people locked into cloud subscriptions. An Adobe Project file is little more than an XML file. There is no functional reason that the XML data could not be parseable by any version of the AdobeCC apps while ignoring the upgraded or deprecated features. Media Composer has done this for years with graceful feature elimination between different versions. No one said it would be easy, but it would be considerably easier to program than the marginally useful bells and whistles that Adobe keeps foisting upon users to rationalize the continued subscription model.

@Patrick Palmer

Is it actually the case that this is a critical and large change though? It's trivially easy to make a project backwards compatible by a very slight edit to the .prproj file (Premiere basically checks the version number of the .prproj, which can be changed using a text editor), and the only problem with this method is that newer effects and tools obviously aren't recognised.

Wouldn't it be a reasonably straightforward coding job to instead make Premiere throw up a warning if the version check is failed, stating that it was created in a newer version of Premiere and hence some effects etc might be missing, and that it may be unstable? Rather than refusing to open it at all?

Hi Taran,

that you have to make a big brake,
can be ok.

But then you have to do it clearly
and do not play around in a running version.

In addition, it should then,
apart from effects, etc. be possible the pure cut
from an existing version to a new version
and to be able to transport back.

Autodesk has at the change, a render engine, once over several versions
the possibility had to be new or old.

But what happened in the current CC2018 version,
is the culmination of bad software management.

In the ADOBE forum is to be read, which Apple announced in 2013,
Quicktime 7 will disappear.
And then suddenly you have to work on it in panic?

Why then you do not have the versions CC2017 and CC2018
of the software options just kept the same
with 2x different render machines?
And that also communicated to the tenants.
It's just silly that you always have to deliver new feature,
so that the tenants continue to rent.
Stability, structure and performance can also be part of long term rental clients.
But that's not what ADOBE managers think.

It's especially frustrating when you get pulled up into a new version for whatever reason (external projects started in the new version, etc), and it happens to be a version you have been trying to avoid.

We had to move up to 12.1, despite the myriad issues that it has because we kept getting projects in that were started in it. Now, we're all struggling with the 12.1 (and 12.1.1) problems, and there was pretty much no way of avoiding it.