SAGE problem

[Vita]

Hi,

My friend who runs a business has had a problem with their SAGE software. He says he's lost his invoices for the past 3-4 years because he has overwritten the data somehow. Is there anyway to get the old data back? He has tried windows restore, and a SAGE back-up but this hasn't been of much use.

He has learnt his lesson, of that he should always back up to an external.

I'm sure once data has been overwritten you cannot get the old data back. The people in purple say they can but I'm unsure on how they would go about this. I said I'd have a look at it for him just incase there are back-ups elsewhere in the system.

I've never used SAGE so I don't know much about it, can anyone help?

 

[monkeyspank]

Backups are in .001 file format I think.
They shouldn't overwrite each other if you leave the default naming system alone... Although he may have renamed them all to backup.001 if he's daft

 

[Mark M]

Despite my absolute hatred for Sage, it won't just delete your invoices. Sounds to me like he has restored a backup from 3/4 years ago. The only thing you can do is hope he has a recent backup and restore that and re enter any invoices that have been put on since the backup was taken.

Edit - just read that he has tried a Sage backup already. Is there any data on there in the last 3-4 year period? Bank payments, year end transfers, etc? If not then my point above still stands.

 

[Vita]

Update:

I went to see my friend and it turned out he had lost 5 days worth of invoices and not 5 years. His friend who phoned me misheard him.

What had happened was his computer crashed while using sage, the machine turned off. It seems this was due to a power cut. When he restarted his machine the invoices from XX date to XX date where not there.

He did mention that they were there before the system crashed. After the system crashed they had disappeared and he did not think to restore from a backup. I'm thinking when he backed up on XX date he might not have backed up. Or that after he entered the new invoices without the lost invoices being in the database he did his usual backup and it overwrote the old backup file.

I asked them if they ever saved more then one backup, they replied no. Whether they had backups elsewhere? Nope they didn't.

I checked the INVOICE.DAT and the SAGEBACK.001 file for last modified times. They showed yesterdays date and a few minutes before they close up shop. I instantly knew that it was a difficult possibility to get the deleted invoices back.

I could only advise them to backup as I searched the whole system, maybe there was a backup somewhere, but alas there wasn't.

I couldn't get the data back, yet sage was showing 52540 invoices. However, invoice numbers only went to 52400. I searched for invoices 52540, 52539 etc, but they were not showing up.

I inputted a invoice in and it showed that 52401 was the last created invoice. I then removed the invoice I entered and it still said invoice 52401 was the last invoice created.

I never used Sage before and this was my first time experience with it. They did ask people who used Sage and they really couldn't advise much.

Have I gone the right way about this, or haven't I? May have I missed somewhere were there were details about the invoices which have been deleted?

It took me a while to throughly check the machine and they did offer to pay for my time, but I declined as they're top blokes.