Splasm Software Discussions

I've read different posts about restoring information, but I'm unable to determine what steps I need to take. It's October 5 - we lost the HD on our Macbook beginning-mid September. I've installed a new HD and moved everything from our last TM backup in April (lesson learned ) using Migration Asst. A very good friend spent 2 weeks recovering data from our damaged HD, which is now all place on the new HD.

Thanks to TM, CBP is here and at launch, I receive the message "unable to locate your Accounts file. Your Accounts file could not be found in /users/NAME OF ORIGINAL USER/Library... Please choose a folder that contains an Account file." Option here is OK. When I navigate to locations that contain account files, everything is greyed. My only option then is to select or Quit - can't do anything in the CB menu, not even verify the version.

I have .cbaccounts (last dated 9/10/13) and .plist (last dated 6/2/13) in my dropbox, now in my documents folder. All of these are greyed out, so I'm unable to select. I located zipped files, last dated 4/11/13 in CURRENT USER/Library/Application Support/Splasm.../Checkbook2.

1. How do I get my data back into CBP??
2. What's the difference between .plist and .cbaccounts?
3. My new user name is SAMEUSERNAME1, as I was unable to set up the HD with the same name as the TM backup. Is that part of the problem?? I've tried accessing from ORIGINAL USERNAME, still a "user" but not the owner/primary, however that is set up.
4. I've thought all along that I would need to input about a month of transactions to get caught up... is that not the case??

Call me "frustrated and confused"! My computer literacy isn't entry-level, but certainly not extensive and this is beyond me.

Step-by-step help is needed and would be very much appreciated!

We can definitely help get you going again! That "Unable to locate your accounts file" message you're seeing would only show up in an older version of CheckBook Pro (pre 2.5), while your .cbaccounts file in Dropbox is surely your latest information that was created with 2.5 or later. To open that .cbaccounts file, you first need to get a fresh copy of the latest version, 2.5.3. Here's where to go to download that: http://www.splasm.com/checkbookpro/index.html

Once that's installed, just double-click on the .cbaccounts file in your Dropbox and CheckBook Pro will open up with all the data in the file loaded in the register. The difference between files with that file extension and the .plist extension is that old versions of the application used PLISTs to store data while CBACCOUNTS is a completely new document format.

You're correct that the change in your User name caused the disconnect. Had that not occurred, data would've been brought right back up from the default save location.

It's likely that you won't have to play catch-up by entering in a month of past info, but that all depends on how current your available documents are.

Finally, to explain the situation you encountered with items being grayed-out, CheckBook Pro was asking you to select a folder and what you were likely seeing were individual files. Should you have your Dropbox folder selected, the contents would be unavailable to select but just hitting OK would let CheckBook Pro know to open the 'Accounts.plist' in the Dropbox folder, if there's a file there of that name (the old default name). Keep in mind that that's all for the old files in the old version, though. Meaning, you'll still want to go through the steps in the top two paragraphs above to bring up your recent data.

_________________
Allan Woodall
Phosphorescent Phage
Splasm Software
http://www.splasm.com

Oh. My! Thank you!! What began with several hours, much anxiety, and little accomplishment, ended with less than 5 minutes' work!! I can breathe again!

It's great to hear that it all worked out!

_________________
Allan Woodall
Phosphorescent Phage
Splasm Software
http://www.splasm.com