This QuickBooks Tip provides instructions for how to rebuild your QuickBooks data file. The rebuild function will help maintain the overall health of your file.
Is your QuickBooks file very large? Is it running slow? Are you in a multi-user environment where 2 or more people are inputting a lot of information on a daily basis? If you answered yes to any of these questions you would probably benefit from rebuilding your data file on a regular basis.
The QuickBooks Rebuild Data function is like a cleaning lady. When you access the rebuild function it looks at all of the information in your file and makes sure that it has been filed correctly. Think of your desk, covered in piles of papers that need to be filed. Before you actually put all of the papers in the filing cabinet, you sort and separate the various piles into organized files. The rebuild function performs the same task.
How to Rebuild Your Data File:
You’ll need to be logged into QuickBooks as the Administrator. If you have a large file, this could take quite awhile – so plan to run this process at lunch time, or gear it up just before you leave for the day.
- From the File menu
- Choose Utilities
- Rebuild Data
The first thing that the Rebuild will require you to do is to make a backup of your data file, go ahead and do that.
As soon as the backup has completed, the rebuild function will automatically start. This tool will take two passes through your file, looking for problems, organizing your data, and trying to fix any problems with your data that it finds. If you sit an watch the process, don’t be concerned if QuickBooks seems to stop responding or stop working at 99% on the first pass and 50% on the second. This just means that it’s found things that are wrong, is attempting to fix them, and then going back to check that everything it found on the first pass has been fixed.
There are times when the Rebuild function will fail, this usually means that there is data damage within your file that the rebuild cannot fix (it does have limited abilities). In a situation like this, you’ll need additional assistance to fix the issues. If you run into this situation, I would recommend that you investigate the services of Accounting Users, Inc., QB or Not QB, or The Bottom Line.
Our own QuickBooks file contains 11 years of data and I rebuild it on a monthly basis and have for many years.
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Everybody says it, but most people don’t really understand it until they need to restore some data they don’t have saved. Only then does it sink in for most people. Not that I’ve never lost anything, but when your job in college was rotating 9-track tapes to offsite locations for 20 hours a week for a bank, backup has been ingrained to my genes for longer than I can think. One of the reasons DEC was my favorite operating system is that every time you saved your work, a copy was made, so unless you purged your old files, you could see the state of your work as it progressed and recover to any point in time you wanted. Still to this day Windows hasn’t completely duplicated this built in functionality.
But this does lead to what I feel are the 3 types of backups that everyone should have.
First the total system failure scenario: If a virus came in and deleted everything on your hard drive, or the drive fails, can you recover without spending days or weeks rebuilding your PC with your installed software, preferences and files? This is preparing for the absolute worst. Everyone should have a backup of this type.
The next type of back is backups for applications. If something major ugly happen in say your accounting software, wouldn’t it be nice to restore just it to the end of the prior day and just redo the current day, instead of correcting the current mess, or say entering a month of data. That is why we designed our backups to let you backup every time you exit the program and then purge extra backups from prior days as well as today
Lastly a backup of all your files should be made often. A backup of what you keep in your My Documents folder. So if you accidentally delete a file that you need, it can easily be restored. This backup should also include your application backups described above.
It is quite important to have backups in more than one place. Fires or theft can clear out an office, so keeping a backup in a safe deposit box or an off-site server is very important.
And once you have you plan, it is best to run a quick test to see that you can restore a file should you really need to.
It seems like a lot of time and investment, but if something goes wrong it will be worth it and you won’t even need to panic.
I seem to constantly be working on two computers. I usually work on my laptop in the wee hours of the morning at the comfort of my dining room table and then I come to the office to really start my day and work on the “big computer”.
The problem always had been on how to keep the two computers synched, not an easy task. I was driving myself nuts using Window’s “briefcase”, but the folders that I store my most often used “stuff” were so big that “briefcase” didn’t always do the trick.
Low and behold, one day I’m reading the latest issue of PCWorld and there is a full page ad for a program called GoodSync (http://www.goodsync.com/).
According to the article, GoodSync was specifically designed to keep 2 or more computers synched automatically, eliminating ME.
So I downloaded the free trial – yes I like FREE TRIALS as well as you, linked the computers (choosing which computer had the “master folder” and which computer was the secondary one) and pretty much told it to “compare the folders” every time that both computers were up and running and to update which ever one had out of date files on it.
Works like a charm, even when both computers have new files that the other does not have.
I liked it so much that I spent the $29.95 for the paid version and will be synched happily ever after!
