Recovering from an interrupted condense process in QuickBooks 2013

A user reported that she encountered a problem while trying to reduce the size of a QuickBooks company file in QuickBooks 2013 prior to uploading data from the file to Intuit's site so that the company could start using the online version of QuickBooks. QuickBooks 2013 provides a "condense" function that is accessible from the File menu by choosing Utilities then Condense data. During the process of removing old entries from many years ago the company owner needed her to do some work in QuickBooks so she terminated the compression operation. As soon as she told me that I suspected she was calling because by doing so the company file may have been corrupted. She thought that the QuickBooks data was being backed up to an external, USB-attached disk drive on her system, but when I checked its contents I found that the last backup to that drive had occurred a couple of years ago. When I tried opening the company file, I saw a warning window stating "This data file cannot be used because it was in the process of removing old transactions and did not finish. Please restore your backup."

QuickBooks data file can't be used

I found the QuickBooks database file was actually stored on the Windows Server 2012 system there. Fortunately that version of the Microsoft Windows operating system as do some others, such as Windows 7, uses Microsoft's Volume Snapshot Service (VSS). To recover files using a VSS copy, simply right-click on a file or folder name then choose Properties.

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QuickBooks company file properties

Then click on the Previous Versions tab. You may see a "Searching for previous versions" message for a few minutes.

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Searching for previous 
versions

When the search is completed, you can select a shadow copy of the file or folder that was made previously.

QuickBooks company file previous versions

You can click on the Restore button to restore from a previous copy.

If, instead of restoring one particular QuickBooks file, you would like to restore all files from a folder, you can follow a similar process after right-clicking on the folder to search for previous versions.

QuickBooks company folder previous 
versions

Though in this case I didn't even need to restore from a VSS copy. When I checked the location where the QuickBooks data was stored, I saw the following:

07/10/2015  05:33 PM    <DIR>          impressi-2003 - Images
07/10/2015  12:57 PM               496 impressi-2003 07-10-2015 Copy.lgb
07/10/2015  12:57 PM       364,630,016 impressi-2003 07-10-2015 Copy.qbw
07/10/2015  05:28 PM               359 impressi-2003 07-10-2015 Copy.qbw.DSN
07/10/2015  05:28 PM               364 impressi-2003 07-10-2015 Copy.qbw.ND
07/10/2015  12:57 PM           327,680 impressi-2003 07-10-2015 Copy.qbw.TLG
12/09/2012  09:15 PM               496 impressi-2003.lgb
07/10/2015  02:28 PM       364,630,016 impressi-2003.qbw
07/10/2015  05:29 PM               359 impressi-2003.qbw.DSN
07/10/2015  12:55 PM                 0 impressi-2003.qbw.LCK
07/10/2015  05:29 PM               348 impressi-2003.qbw.ND
07/10/2015  02:28 PM       211,484,672 impressi-2003.qbw.TLG
12/11/2012  12:16 AM               188 impressi-2003.rid
07/10/2015  03:03 PM    <DIR>          impressi071015 - Images
07/10/2015  02:34 PM               425 impressi071015.ND
07/10/2015  03:34 PM       364,630,016 impressi071015.qbw
07/10/2015  05:30 PM               359 impressi071015.qbw.DSN
07/10/2015  05:30 PM               349 impressi071015.qbw.ND
07/10/2015  03:34 PM       138,674,176 impressi071015.QBW.TLG

QuickBooks apparently duplicates the files associated with a QuickBooks company file when you start the condense process, creating files that have the same name, but with the date and "Copy" inserted at the end of the file name. E.g., in this case the original files were named impressi-2003, since the company has been using QuickBooks since 2003. So QuickBooks created impressi-2003 07-10-2015 Copy copies. I deleted the files that didn't have the "07-10-2015 Copy" in the name and renamed the ones that did by removing the "07-10-2015 Copy" from their names. I was then able to open the company file in QuickBooks with all the prior data being available again.

I clicked on File, selected, Utilities, and Verify Data.QuickBooks reported "QuickBooks detected no problems with your data."

QuickBooks detected no problems

Then while logged into a QuicKBooks admin account, I chose File, Utilities, and Condense Data. I saw a "Not allowed in multi-user mode" window informing me that "To Condense data, you must switch to single-user mode. (If you switch to single-user mode now, no other users may use the file until you switch back to multi-user mode or close the company file.).

Condense not allowed in multi-user
mode

I clicked on File and selected Switch to Single User-mode. I was then able to start the process of reducing the size of the QuickBooks company file through the condense process.

 

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Created: Friday July 10, 2015