I have been using manager for a while now and I have always done updates. I believe the last update before today was about a month ago. I went to go create an invoice this morning and all my businesses are gone. I tried downloading another version of desktop and still all the same. In the meantime I imported a backup version of one of my businesses just to get the invoice done, but I have no idea what went wrong. I took a screen shot to show what I am talking about
thanks in advance for any help
Did you perform a Manager software update before the businesses disappeared? Or did they disappear and then you updated your accounting software?
What operating system are you using? Two Mac users have recently reported similar problems after updating to macOS v10.14 (Mojave). Unfortunately, neither followed through with questions and suggestions on the forum, so we don’t know if the problems were resolved.
Basically, it appears that your index and/or data location files were deleted or corrupted. What shows under your Preferences tab as the application data path?
I preformed a manger software update after the business disappeared, but I dot believe that the software was outdated anyway because I regularly update manager. Also I just updated my Mac computer today after everything happened in hopes it would correct itself as well, but that didn’t work either. My operating system is macOS v10.14 (Mojave) but like I mentioned I only updated after the problem occured.
Under my preferences tab it shows /Users/alessandraamey/.local/share/Manager
OK, thanks. That is the default location. Copy the application data path and paste it into the Go to Folder search box in the Finder:
Go to that folder (which is normally hidden, but will be visible this way). If not already in the classic list view, change your Finder to that option under View and post a screen shot of what you see. Should be something like this:
Also, have you ever moved your application data to another drive, iCloud, or a different folder?
I am confused by what I see. Can you repost a screen shot showing the headers so I know what the date/time column is and how it is sorted? I am especially confused by the apparent dividing line above “Previous 7 Days” and the “June” heading, since most of what follows is after June.
Also, you did not answer my question about whether you had ever moved your data somewhere besides the default location. That is important.
I never moved anything. I used manager to do payroll last Thursday then I went to go use it this morning to do up an invoice and it has this problem.
Here is what I think happened. Somehow, your data file was deleted. That file is where Manager looks to discover the location of your application data. Since there was no data file, the program recreated business with the hexadecimal keys (the long, alphanumeric gibberish) matching what was in the index file. That’s the one with all zeroes in its name. In other words, the program knew there was supposed to be a file for each business, but could not find them because it did not know where to look.
You then reinstalled Manager and the same thing happened all over again, with one key difference. This time, Manager created files without hyphens in their names. All that happened between 7:30 and 8:00 this morning. At about 8:15, you imported your Frontenac Fabrication backup file.
What is puzzling is that you said you’d been doing updates regularly and recently. Hyphens were taken out of file names a couple years ago. That’s why I thought you might have moved data around at some point. All those files with hyphens are obsolete. The good news is that Manager will convert them to the current database structure and rename them.
The better news is that your data is all there, in the last four files shown in your list. Here is how to proceed.
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Create a new folder on your desktop named Temp Manager Files. You will move things here until you are completely satisfied they are not needed before eventually deleting those you don’t need.
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Launch Manager. On the Businesses page, use the Remove Business button to remove every alphanumeric “business” except the Frontenac Fabrication one you restored today. Each of these is only 28KB and is an empty “shell” business created because the index told the program it should be there, even though its data (and real name) could not be located. Be sure to delete the one with all zeroes, because it is not a business either.
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Use the Add Business button to add each of the last four files in the application data folder. Notice that each of these is hundreds of KB or even MB in size.
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Since these will be added as hexadecimal gibberish, open each one from the Businesses page to determine which business it really is. You can look in Business Details under Settings. Rename each business using the link beside its name while it is open.
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You will probably now have two versions of Frontenac Fabrication. Determine which is more up to date and remove the other one.
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Close the program and relaunch it. Verify that your businesses are all present and contain expected data.
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Now go back to the application data folder and move all those 28KB shell companies to the Temp Manager Files folder. Also remove any other unnecessary files, such as the version of Frontenac Fabrications you decided to remove. As you do this, you may find this Guide helpful in identifying obsolete files: Manage application data folder contents | Manager.
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When you have successfully closed and relaunched Manager several times and are completely satisfied you have all your data back, you can delete the Temp Manager Files folder and its contents.
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Okay so far so good. I followed all the steps that you outlined and I have successfully obtained all my data. Is it okay to keep the temp files for a couple days just to make sure its working, cause a couple times when I closed everything and restarted manager, my business page had absolutely nothing on it, and I had to redo the steps again. this final time seems to have worked but I"m a little nervous.
Yes. You can keep the old files as long as you want. I would also be concerned that the fix doesn’t stick.
Question: does your application data folder now have a data file?
So far this morning everything is there. I closed manager and re-opened it a bunch of times as well.
when I go to my application data it takes me to my documents folder but it is completely empty. I’m very puzzled by this as well.
You are showing a Documents folder on iCloud, not the application data folder. By application data folder, I was referring to the one you showed in Post #5 of this thread, at /Users/alessandraamey/.local/share/Manager.
You need to navigate to the folder shown under Application Data, the same way you did to capture the screen shot in your Post #5. I am asking to see that same screen listing all the hexadecimal-named files to see if there is a data file now that everything is working.
Yes, thank you. This answers my question. This is probably more than you want to know, but I was trying to determine whether Manager would recreate the data file if your data has always been in the default location. Evidently, it does not need to once the index file (the one with all the zeroes) has been properly rebuilt.
Everything looks good. Now, just make sure you keep making regular backups to a separate drive. This can be iCloud. And remember that each business needs to be backed up separately.
Okay. Thank you a million times over for all your help, it is very much appreciated.