Symptom

While opening a document file with BarTender Designer, you may receive the following error message:

Error Message #3324 The document [file path] was created with a newer version of BarTender and therefore cannot be loaded.

Applicable to

BarTender Designer

Solution

This error occurs because the label document you are trying to open has a version that is higher than the current Bartender version installed on your computer (e.g., attempting to open a label document created from BarTender 2021 with BarTender 2019). To fix this issue, the template file needs to be resaved as a backward compatible version with the following steps:

1. Locate the .btw label document file within Windows Explorer then open the file with a Notepad application.
   
2. Once the label document is opened with Notepad, you will see CompatibleVersion that indicates the BarTender version required(or higher) to open this file.

3. Open the label document with a supported version of BarTender Designer then select File > Save As and choose the version of BarTender you would like this label document to be backward compatible with.
    
   Please be aware that, from BarTender 2022 R5 onward, the oldest version of BarTender you can back save a document to is version 10.1.