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."
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.
Then click on the Previous Versions tab. You may see a "Searching for previous versions" message for a few minutes.
When the search is completed, you can select a shadow copy of the file or folder that was made previously.
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.
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."
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.).
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.
Created: Friday July 10, 2015