Just FYI: Restore of backup fails from server, works local

[Bruce]

I had completed a backup prior to installing 2024 professional. Weeks later I'm catching up on accounting and I some how mess up the Johnson & Johnson spinoff and reverse split. After trying to fix it and failing I decide to start with a clean slate and restore the backup. I close the currently open portfolio, then file / restore, select the right backup and the restore dialog opens. I leave everything on default settings and click "restore". It says "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process."

I quit out of that, close FM, and reboot the computer. Open FM and "new portfolio" wizard opens. I quit that and do the steps for "restore". Same error message.

The backups are on a network server. I copy the backup file to my desktop (~70M) and everything works fine.

[Mark]

Hi Bruce,

Could you see what file was causing the problem?

[Bruce]

Sorry, no. I only clicked on that latest backup ... the one I made just prior to installing FM2024 Pro. The only feedback the system gave was the message quoted above.

For what it's worth, the server is Synology with their maintenance / health-check software running. My machine is a Win11. IDK if that made a routine in FM think the file was busy or not. I know a long time ago when I worked in the industry, if server-maintenance software was running, some analytics software would think it's files were busy until the maintenance software was done running.

On a separate note, what I messed up in the JNJ spin-off wasn't obvious to me. In the real world JNJ spun-off KVUE at 1:8.0324 with cash for fractional shares. At the same time JNJ did a reverse split of 0.7697:1. All on the same day (8/18). I entered all that correctly (per the help file and per bulletin-board instructions to "sell" the fractional shares after the spin) but ended up with approx 2/3'rds the cost basis for JNJ when completed. I thought I'd screwed up data entry, so deleted all the transactions and started over (which created a new KVUE-1.dat file). That time I really messed it up by typing things in wrong. THAT'S when I decided to restore the backup (I'd only loose about an hour of my work ... a small price for clean files). When I went to type the pair of transactions in, I realized the cost-basis mistake could be that FM forced the split to be before the spin-off (as indicated in the order the entries showed in the "transactions" register window), even though I entered them the other way around. So I lied and made the split the day after it actually occurred, so the split was on post-spin-off cost bases. That made the residual cost basis really close (like $5 out of ~$25k).

I saw in the bulletin-board convo that the user recommended a change to the "spin-off" dialog to say "sell fractional shares" and you'd taken it under advisement. A much quicker shorter-term solution not involving coding would be to put a note in the help-file to say enter a separate transaction to sell fractional shares. It might also need a note to say if their are multiple share-adjustment transactions in one day, then they should be forced to be on different days (if that's really what the data-entry solution should be). Changing the help-file is a lot easier / faster than implementing new code.

[Mark]

Hi Bruce,

Okay, well, glad you were able to figure out a solution to get your data restored. I do like the idea of adding this to the documentation. Thanks for the idea/feedback.