Cannot open master portfolio

[SDS]

Mark,

I just switched to version 9.4 from version 8 this past weekend. Although I've been using FM all weekend to create reports, when I attempted to open my master portfolio tonight with the software, I get the message "other error reading portfolio". If I can't get access to this portfolio, I'm toast. Please help.

[SDS]

Well, rather than try to manually redirect to the autobackup file, I simply hit 'restore' and everything from my portfolio appears to be retrieved, fortunately. However, this is quite a scare because I have no idea why an entire portfolio could get 'misplaced', given that I've made no re-arrangements of anything on this machine. Any suggestions to reduce the chance of this happening again?

[Mark]

Hi SDS,

Sorry about the trouble, and glad you figured out how to restore. Yes, you use "File / Restore..." to restore, and not any of the "File / Open" commands.

I'm not sure what caused the original problem. Are you storing the data on a local hard drive, and not on a jump drive, or some other removable drive? Did you get this error upon opening FM and it automatically opening your last portfolio, or did you select the portfolio from the File menu? If you picked it from the File menu, maybe you accidentally opened some other portfolio file?

If the portfolio file is not saved completely for any reason, you will get this error. Possible reasons include the machine getting powered off while Fund Manager is writing to disk, a hard drive error/failure, a virus, or some bug we've not discovered. I would suggest making frequent backups and utilizing the auto-backup feature. If this problem happens again, make a copy of all your data files before doing a restore. ZIP this data up, and send it to us, so we can reproduce it. We can take a look.

[SDS]

Mark,

I'm using a ThinkPad that backs up to a 2nd harddrive automatically every night.

Question: If the new version of FM performs a backup automatically, I do not understand the purpose of the manual backup function, especially as this seems to backup only whatever happens to be open, if I understand correctly from the help file descriptions.

[Mark]

Hi SDS,

The manual backup (File / Backup...) does the same thing as the automatic backup. The differences are that with the manual backup you can run it at any time and you can pick any location and file name you want.

The backup backs up everything that is open. This includes all your investments, sub-portfolios, and preferences. Normally this includes all your data, as you can have an unlimited number of sub-portfolios.