Repairing a Damaged Company File

My company file is severely damaged, and I need to go back to a recent backup. How do I do that?

In rare cases, the data in your company file may become so badly damaged that Goldenseal accounting software is not able to read it. This can happen from any of the following situations:

• If your hard drive suffers physical damage that changes or erases some bits within your company file.
• If Goldenseal is interrupted in the middle of a save because of a system crash or power failur.
• If a system or software bug writes data into the wrong place on your hard drive, and writes over Goldenseal data
• If your computer's file allocation tables become corrupted, and Goldenseal gets data from the wrong part of your hard drive

Most damage to Goldenseal files will only affect one or two records, but damage to a few parts of your company file can severaly disrupt your use of the file:

• There is an ID index which keeps track of record locations on the disk. If this is damaged, many records can become unuseable.
• There is a File Manager which keeps track of the location of records and empty spaces in the file. If this is damaged, you will no longer be able to save records.
• The beginning of each Goldenseal file includes some header information and details about each record class. Damage here may make the file completely unreadable.

What to do with a Damaged File

Modern hard drives are very reliable, and Goldenseal is very careful about the way it manages record saves, so file damage is extremely rare. But if you are seeing many mystery error messages or otherwise think you may have a damaged file, first follow these steps:

1. Immediately Exit/Quit from Goldenseal, and make a backup copy of your current company file.
2. Locate your most recent backup file(s), and make an extra copy of the backup file(s). HINT-- This is when you will really appreciate having a good backup system, or really regret not having a better one!
3. Call or email Turtle Creek Support and let us know what error messages you are getting. We can advise you on the seriousness of the problem, and help you to salvage your company data.
4. We may ask you to send us a copy of the damaged file. By seeing the file, it's possible we can better help you repair it or salvage data. We'll also do an autopsy on it so we can better prevent damaged files in the future.

What you do next depends on the severity of the file damage.

File Won't Open

If the file won't open at all, you will need to go back to your most recent backup copy. Please send us a copy of the damaged file-- it may help us to prevent similar damage in the future.

File Gives Error Messages

If the file opens but gives error messages, you may be able to continue using the same file. Goldenseal is able to self-repair some types of file damage, if the problems are not severe.

To check the integrity of your data, choose Security from the View menu, and choose Verify File from the submenu. That will check every record, and report any problems it finds. That will help you to decide what to do.

Some types of file damage can be fixed by the following steps:

1. Choose Security from the View menu, and choose Compress File from the submenu.
2. Goldenseal will re-save every record, and 'tidy up' your file.
3. Choose Security from the View menu, and choose Verify File from the submenu. It will report any damage that still remains.

If many error messages continue despite the above steps, you will probably need to revert to your last backup file.

How to Salvage Data

When you go back to a backup copy of your Goldenseal company file, you'll lose any data that was entered since that backup. However, if you can open a damaged file, you can probably salvage most or all of the recent data, and then import it into the backup file. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Open the damaged file.
2. Choose Export from the File menu, and choose Entire Company File from the submenu.
3. Where it says Date Range, choose Custom Range, and type in a date range that starts at the date of your backup file and ends today.
4. Click OK.
5. Choose where to save the file (in My Documents or wherever you like to save things).
6. Goldenseal will look at every record and export any items created since your backup file. The export will take a
   minute or two to run.

NOTE-- You may get some error messages when you do the export, but just hit OK to each. You can also hold down the Control key to skip all error messages.

After you finish exporting from the damaged file, you can import the data into your backup file. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Choose Exit or Quit from the File menu to close the damaged file.
2. Open the copy of your backup file (not the original backup!)
3. Coose Import from the File menu, ahd choose Company File from the submenu
4. Locate the file exported in the previous steps.
5. Goldenseal will bring in the recent data.

Tidying after the Import

When you export data from a damaged file, Goldenseal will automatically post data from each new record-- so accounts payable, accounts receivable, job costing and other functions will have correct information.

If some records are very badly damaged, Goldenseal will skip them. It may also bring in some records with incorrect data, if they were corrupted just partially.

It's probably a good idea to double-check the data from the damaged file, and match it to the new imported file to make sure it matches. The best way to do that is to make reports so you can easily scan a large amount of data.

For example, to check material purchase records, follow these steps:

1. Choose Expenses from the Reports menu, and choose Material Purchases from the submenu.
2. Enter Custom Range in the Date Range popup, and type in a range from the date of the backup file to today.
3. Click Update.
4. You'll see a list of all purchases. Click the Print button to print it, or click Save As Text to save it as a text file.
5. Choose Exit or Quit from the File menu.
6. Open your new file.
7. Repeat steps 1 to 3 in the new file.
8. Compare the data in the report with the data in the original file.

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