Lost data

[Colin Law]

On 8 February 2015 at 13:44, Gill Pyrah <gillpyrah at gmail.com> wrote:

Please use Reply All or Reply List when replying to list messages
otherwise the message goes (as this one did) only to the poster you
are replying to.  I am forwarding it to the list.

> Hi Colin thanks for your response, which, strangely (perhaps because of
> monitoring?) only arrived with me today.

Your original post only arrived with me today, I have absolutely no idea why.

>
> The bin was within Gnucash.

I did not know that GC had a bin.  How do you access it?

> I found that by copying and pasting every
> individual coded item into the main accounts file I could recover it in
> usable form. But there were hundreds of items and it took a couple of days.
> It wasn't possible (as far as I could see) to copy, reinstate or move them
> all at once.

Were you not aware that GC automatically keeps backups of the accounts
file each time you save it?  All you had to do was to pick up the
latest backup and you would have been back at the point when you last
saved it.

> Now my problem is, when the time comes to send a copy of my year's accounts
> file to my accountant's portal, in a form he can use (to open splits, etc),
> how do I do it? I simply dare not risk "exporting" the data and loosing the
> whole lot once I've been using Gnucash for a year.

It is very simple, all you have to do is to save a copy of your
accounts file before doing the operation.  Then you can copy that file
back if it all goes wrong.  In fact since, as I said earlier,
automatic backups are taken then even this is not really necessary.
But do you not keep backups of you file anyway?  Particularly since
the problem you encountered.  Remember that a hard disk or computer
can go up in smoke at any time (literally or metaphorically).  If that
happened and you have not got a backup (at least on another machine or
CD, and preferably off site) then you could loose all your data with
little hope of recovery.  The same is true of all the other documents,
photos and so on that are on the machine.

> I asked a friendly computer geek (who hadn't seen Gnucash before) whether he
> could work it out but he couldn't - and also didn't want to risk exporting
> everything to the bin.

Not much of a geek if he did not suggest taking a backup of the
accounts file first.

> My system is Windows 8.

Sorry to hear that, you have my sympathies.

> Any advice very welcome.

Switch to Ubuntu?

Colin

> Thanks, Gill
>
> On 8 February 2015 at 13:35, Colin Law <clanlaw at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 14 October 2014 at 14:01,  <gillpyrah at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Trying to export data to accountants accidentally lost it all to “bin”
>> > and though I can see every item as a few KB each, can’t copy or highlight
>> > all to retrieve. Somehow I’ve got two entries back but thousands are still
>> > in the bin. Please help! I have tried going to “import” and got back to the
>> > bin, just can’t pick the info up.
>>
>> I, for one, have little idea what you mean.  Exactly what have you
>> lost?  Do you mean you have lost your main accounts file?  What
>> exactly do you see in the bin and which bin are you talking about?
>>
>> Also which operating system are you using (Win 7 or whatever) which
>> version of gnucash?
>>
>> Colin
>
>