My webhost went out of business because of sanctions. The backup of my 20+ year old site they gave me doesn't have an SQL file. It has a 55 Mb Binary-sql file

Can that be chenged to SQL and used to install the database on the new server or am I F&^%ed ?

Sorry to hear about it!

I never did anything with the binary log files (I assume that we're talking about the binary log files).

Maybe this will help?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42374958/recover-lost-mysql-data

or this:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48554131/restore-mysql-database-using-binary-log-file-log-bin-on-windows

From this article: https://ottomatik.io/mysql-binary-logs-backup/, it seems like you my need an old mysqldump file as a starting point, and then you could apply the binary logs to restore it to the latest version.

Did you talk to them about getting you the MySQL files? If they still have access to the server, then they should be able to get you that?

They're not log files

They're called xxx_binary-sql (with not file extension)

On further searching it sems they are only 32 bit check files and don't contain any sql details

So that's 20+ years of work down the toilet

Again, I'm so sorry to hear it.

But I can't believe that they could not provide you with the database backup. If they got you all the other files, then obviously they still have access to the server, right?

I would ask them to explain to you what these files are, and how do you suppose to use them? Maybe they could convert these files to a mysql format?

Another way to get back your content, even if it would be very time consuming, is to use http://www.archive.org and then copy individual pages from Publisher there, e.g. your recipes.

Maybe you could even create a script that would go through all the Publisher posts by "id" number, and extract them from http://www.archive.org? Just thinking here loud...

Check your PM...