Archive and Condense Data

Feb 23, 2006 9 Replies

I was looking at my sales profile in a Sales graph for 2005. Arghhh! There were apparently no sales from January through June!



On investigation it appears the transactions were "condensed". In looking at the menu, I see File / Archive and Condense. I wonder if I punched that button accidentally?



I'm rather annoyed that this has happened. I'd like to prevent it from happening at all in that I work with a number of small companies that probably don't much need to be 'compressed'.



Any suggestions / comments?



Thanks,



Fred


Haven't done it myself, but doesn't the program prompt you to create a backup before it does the archive/condense? If so, should be an easy fix to just restore that last backup. If no backup, then I have no idea.

I agree with Leo.

- It's very difficult to do this "accidentally" as there are several prompts and warnings, and you MUST make a backup.

- Who are you "annoyed" with?

- As Leo suggests, you can restore your backup but of course it will not contain subsequent transactions.

- If you've made backups, condensed files, and then deleted the backups, all while asleep - you've got no-one but yourself to be annoyed with.

There are two kinds of people in the world.

1) Those who have restored from a backup. 2) Bald people.

"!-!" wrote:

Well, that's interesting. I'm the only user and there's no reason in the world that I'd have done it and I'd certainly have the backups - not that I raised any questions about backups.

I'm not annoyed with anyone - just by the situation. Why do you ask? Or are "you" really Eliza? !-! doesn't look very human actually....

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Maybe I'll try it with an empty "company" just to see what it does for myself.

I'm looking at my company file and all the transactions from January through June 2005 have been condensed. I can see Sales in a P&L just fine but a Sales report shows zero sales during that period - and they are condensed. That almost seems like a serious program bug doesn't it? See it in one report and not in another? Anyway, I don't want that to happen again - so I thought it wise to ask some experts.

It appears we're at an impasse because I don't know how it happened and y'all think it's impossible that I didn't do it purposefully ..... c'est la vie.

Fred

OK - did that. I couldn't duplicate the result. I had invoices and invoice payments and bank deposits scattered through May 2005. I condensed as of

5/14/2005. Nothing disappeared. The Sales Graph remains as before for this simple company. The transactions include transactions in May 2005. A number of invoices, some paid and deposited. All bank transactions through 5/14/2004 are cleared.

Everything looks normal. There are no condensed transactions. Maybe this file is too simple...?

On the other hand, my real company file has all sales condensed through February 2004, has them intact through November 2004, has them compressed again from December 2004 through May 2005 and has them intact thereafter.

So, if one had done a condense that did something to the transactions up to

5/05, then how did the transactions from Feb 04 to Nov 04 remain intact? After all, the condense process only asks for an *end* date....

Fred

Got a surveillance video tape? What you are describing is impossible to do without knowing exactly what you are doing. So, if you didn't do it knowingly I suspect some serious file damage. Serious enough I'm surprised the computer runs at all! The other explanation, someone else has been tampering with your data.

  1. Some transactions cannot be condensed. "Help" gives a brief description of which transactions and why, along with suggestions how to condense as many transactions as possible (which is what is usually desired). This may explain why transactions are condensed through one period but not in an earlier period. And it may explain why no transactions were condensed in your simple test - not because the file was "too simple", but because some property of the transactions prevented them being condensed.

  1. You asked why sales show in one report, but not in another. "Help" explains this - "Summary" reports such as Balance Sheet and P&L include condensed transactions, but "detail" reports do NOT - because the details have been condensed!

OK - thanks everyone. This is helpful.

Fred

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