Converting Files made with X7 to X5

The solution for converting  the new “Coreldraw 2018” files to the older X6 files was intended as an inexpensive trick to do the job. It is not perfect, I know. But not everybody can spend a €297,00 for an upgrade or € 594,00 for a full version. From your reply I can tell that you already did the upgrade and work as an professional with “Coreldraw”. A lot of people don’t even know about fonts, effects and colour profiles, as they use Coreldraw mainly as a simple desktop publisher. They cannot spend a whole lot of money to it. I used Coreldraw as a professional for education purpose in my job. Now I have been retired from my job I’m more or less in that same situation. I now use “Coreldraw X6” (under Windows 10!!!) for making line drawings in support for my artwork. Now Inkscape is not a bad solution if you don’t have friends with the latest version of “Coreldraw”. Inkscape supports fonts as it works with “Windows” which, usually has all the fonts you require. Some missing fonts are easily to download without any costs, most of the time. Inkscape would support, sRGB colour, spot colour. RGB and CMYK colour-spaces. I think that the mentioned solution is not too bad for people that simply have not the money for just another annual version of Coreldraw.

I think that “Corel” should take more care of their customers.
They should launch a free application or converter for this problem and give more help with other problems that come with older products of “Corel”
Or is the customer with a small wallet not counting anymore?

Note that I prefer working with X6 above “inkscape” as X6 is more convenient to use.

The problem is not about the use of a free software instead a commercial one. Of course, not all people could spend money on a program, unless it was the tool for the everyday work. The problem is to open a file with a different program that the one that it was created. Same happens if you try to open a PDF with CorelDRAW or open a CorelDRAW file using Illustrator... it's possible, but just take care because some things could change.

I know some people don't know about color profiles, but CorelDRAW allows to embed an RGB profile, a CMYK, a Pantone, a grayscale... all on the same document. Inkscape doesn't allows that nor doen't allows to create a PDF with ore than one color profile. So, although they don't know about color profiles, they will notice is the result is wrong... unfortunately, most of the times will be too late.

Corel provides several ways to save newest files to old versions, you can downsave files from 2018 to X5 (an olders), you can save as CMX (that it could be open with any previous versions) and also you can download and install the trial version and use it for a several days for convert your files.