assistance, please, with creating a pgn database

Hi. I feel like something of an idiot here, because I believe that this is something that many Chess players can do now, and do often; even kids. This is because everyone uses Chess software nowadays.
I am not totally computer illiterate - but not really talented at figuring out things when I have no idea what to do.
So I arranged to download ALL of my games from Redhotpawn in pgn format. Russ sent me a zip file, which unzipped to TEXT format, pgn games. At least - they LOOK RIGHT to me - they have all the headings and everything; a couple hundred games.

But this is NOT a pgn database, and when I tried to read them and view them in several pgn readers (notably the Chessbase Reader) the file can not be recognized. I have tried a few things - like telling Windows to open the file with Chessbase - but nothing works. Obviously I am CLUELESS here.

Should this really be hard?? I mean - I think everyone does it, so that's why I'm coming across as so sheepish. Maybe I'm just too damn old.

BUT if anyone here can help me, and explain what I must do, I'll be quite appreciative. Perhaps I'll reward you by playing a game! Look - if this is complicated, then I'm not asking for huge explanations - in that case, perhaps steer me to a reference. BUT if this is fairly simple, please enlighten me.

Thanks in advance. (meow)

@MisterCat

If you wish, you may email the file to me at bigdoggproblem@comcast.net, and I'll fix it for you.

@mistercat said
Hi. I feel like something of an idiot here, because I believe that this is something that many Chess players can do now, and do often; even kids. This is because everyone uses Chess software nowadays.
I am not totally computer illiterate - but not really talented at figuring out things when I have no idea what to do.
So I arranged to download ALL of my games from Red ...[text shortened]... me to a reference. BUT if this is fairly simple, please enlighten me.

Thanks in advance. (meow)

Just wanted to say "Thank you" to Bigdogproblem for offering to help you with this. It's folks like Bigdog that make the chess community a place I like to be in. 🙂

Have you tried to just change the file type from xyz.txt to xyz.pgn ?
Open the file with wordpad or whichever text editor you use, then save it as a pgn file. That should create a new file and also preserve the original as a txt file.

Or you can just copy the original file to a new folder and then change the copied filename without even opening it. (that will also preserve your original .txt file.) Right-click the filename and then just change the 'txt' to 'pgn' and save it. It should open after that as a pgn file.

We all have to start somewhere but the first step is to get your games in pgn format i.e chessgames.pgn then the next step is to use a pgn reader which the OP has e.g ChessBase Reader 2017.

You can get CBR 2017 from chessbase. (Just downloading this now so thanks for this post OP). With the free ChessBase reader, you can open all standard file formats (.cbh, .cbf, .pgn)

Once in the pgn application then its normally import pgn or something along those lines in case the app has its own format i.e. CBH for chessbase databases.

If you've tried to import and it fails it might mean that the file might be chessgame.pgn.txt or it might have the email contents as well as the games meaning it can't recognise the pgn. I hope BD sorts you out.

WOW! Thank you for all these posts!

Listen, I'm at work all day today, replying from my cell phone. When I get home tonight, I'll get back to work on this at my home computer, and post here regarding success/failure. (meow)

Ok I read the FAQs...so how does a player download all their completed games?

@ogb
Above posts: got home way to late to futz; my day off is Tuesday; will get back to work and let you know.

ogb: you can't; not YET; of course, you can download ONE GAME AT A TIME easily; just use the button in any game screen, near the bottom: 'pgn'.

At present, there exists NO FEATURE to download all games in one shot. Updates on this are in a thread I started in the forum called 'site ideas'. I got them THIS TIME, because Russ did me a favor - I joined via one year membership, he got my money, and sent me the games. Continue in this vain in the thread I mention. (meow)

Mister cat..thanks for the info..

@mwmiller

THANK YOU, mwmiller. After trying several OTHER THINGS on my own, and giving up, your solution, simple as it is, worked like a charm! I used WordPad to 'save as' pgn. Chessbase Reader views it perfectly. I am eager to see what other features the Reader offers - for instance, will it created a statistical opening analysis, as we can do here using 'analyze games', etc. ? Perhaps, NOW that this works, I will try out some alternative software!

I'm really tired, and want to respond to all the suggestions made, and the help offered, but can not right now. I will do so in coming days. Thanks again. (meow)

If you go My Games > Archive then see Manage games then select all games then email pgn you should be able to select at least 30 games.

Email page 1 then select page 2 etc and email much better than emailing one by one game.

I see that feature; haven't tried it. It occurs to me that it would not solve my immediate problem, since this was the fact that the moves of many of my games are GONE from the accessible directory here.
Russ straightened me out, in that they are 'gone', but not 'forgotten', meaning he dug up the ORIGINAL moves scores and sent them to me.
If these game records had not disappeared, I guess then there would be less of a problem. (meow)