Importing topo data

Having problems importing topo data from a client. I believe he recorded the data with an fmx. I tried to read in the files he sent and farmworks wouldn't recognize any of the coverage data. I loaded what he sent me into my fmx and opened it in wm drain, closed it and saved it back onto my card. I was then able to load it into farm works and create a topo map. Is there something I can do to get it to pull the files out without having to open them in wmdrain first?