i just went through this a little bit ago.  CS5 was able to open my AE 6 files (using import file) and then I could open the resulting CS 5 save in CS6.  CS5 seemed to be a good swiss army knife release in terms of backwards compatibility.

On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 12:49 PM, David Torno <torno@sydefxink.com> wrote:

Ya, that's Paul's script. I think it goes backwards only though. New to old.

David Torno

On Nov 14, 2013, at 12:30 PM, Phil Spitler <phil@bonfirelabs.com> wrote:

This script has always intrigued me but I have never tried it.

http://aescripts.com/pt_opensesame/

OpenSesame brings backwards compatibility to After Effects, exporting projects that can be opened in any version from CS3 or later. 

Projects are exported as human readable text files that can also be edited in a text editor or spreadsheet in various ways, such as changing text layers, colors, footage and file paths.

Phil

On Nov 14, 2013 10:32 AM, "David Torno" <torno@sydefxink.com> wrote:

I just did this not too long ago for Rachel Max on this list. Her projects ranged from AE 5 - AE 6.5. I was able to open them in AE7.0, save them out, then open them in CS3, save them out once more, and then open them with CS6. 

David Torno

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On Nov 14, 2013, at 7:08 AM, Curtis Nichols <curtisn@pcsproductions.com> wrote:

I have a AE project created in 2006 using 6.5 (pre-CS). AE CC won't open it. I'm wondering how far back I need to go to get to a version that will open it and resave so that I can bring it into AE CC.

Ideas?