Recovering from crash

[John Ralls]

On Oct 11, 2011, at 2:01 PM, Axel Essbaum wrote:

> 
> Running GnuCash 2.4.7 under OSX 2.4.7.
> 
> I just had GnuCash crash again because I clicked Quit without first saving.
> 
> When I look in the folder with all of my .gnucash files and I try to open the most recent one (pre-crash), it opens successfully but shows all of the invoices I have posted in the last 2 days as open and unposted, even though I have clicked Save in GnuCash many times today.
> 
> How do I restore to my most recent data?

Interesting, when I do that it doesn't crash until after it has done the save.

Alongside your data file (filename) and all of the backups (filename.timestamp.gnucash) there should also be log files (filename.timestamp.log). 

When you open Gnucash and click through the "open anyway" box, Gnucash should open your regular data file. If you're manually selecting a file with a timestamp in the name, then you're opening an older file. (Gnucash loads all of the data from whatever file you select, or the last one opened, and then closes and renames the file, tacking a timestamp and .gnucash extension on the end. If you have files named filename.timestamp.gnucash.timestamp.gnucash, you're opening the wrong file.)

So the first thing to check is that you are, in fact, opening the right file. Look up in the title bar: If it has a long string of numbers starting 20111011 (2011-10-11, i.e., today) then you've opened the wrong file. If you haven't done this dance too many times, the right one should still be in the recent list in the File menu.

If you're sure that you got the right file and that your work is still missing, look at the log files for that data file -- and for any backup files you might have entered data into (Those will have logfiles with names that look like filename.timestamp.gnucash.timestamp.log). Quicklook works on log files, so you can browse the log files in Finder. Find the earliest one for which data does *not* appear in your data file and select File>Import>Replay Gnucash .log File, then select that log file. Repeat for every subsequent log file. 

Click the save button.

Go back to work.

Regards,
John Ralls