Missing Transactions?

[Colin Law]

On 15 October 2016 at 21:53, <gnucash-list at cosgroves.us> wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> In early October, when it was time to reconcile my accounts, I
> discovered that my two largest accounts somehow were missing many
> transactions.  In the case of my credit card, those were missing
> between April and September.  In the case of my checking account,
> those were missing all the way back to mid January.
>
> I checked the FAQ, specifically this page:
> https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-guide/basics-backup1.html
>
> I found out that I need to find the .YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.gnucash file to
> recover back to the specified date.  But, I don't have any of the
> date ranges covering the missing transactions.  Similarly, I don't
> have any log files for those ranges either.
>

You don't need to find a backup from before the date when the transactions
are missing, just one from before they were somehow deleted. The first
thing to do is to make a complete backup of the folder containing all those
files in case you somehow confuse things even further. Then work your way
back opening each backup file in turn (starting with the most recent and
working back) until you find one where the transactions are still there.
Then use File Save As to save a new copy of that with an appropriate name
and add transactions since that time.

Also note that you should be taking backups of the the .gnucash files
independent of the built in mechanism in gnucash. Also you should be
backing up any other files (not gnucash related) that are of importance.
Remember that a disk or PC may go up in smoke (literally or metaphorically)
at any time. If that happens and you have not got an independent backup
then you may lose everything.

Colin