Just lost over two hours work - "an unnamed file has a bad format".

[Simon Williams]

I am really, unmentionably miffed ...

I have a deadline to reach and I have lost over two hour’s work when moving a section.

Should I have done a backup? Maybe ... Should I be wondering if all my work will be lost cutting and pasting a section ... NO!

I do not have any trust in Actinic over the years I have been using it, I worry constantly about crashes and problems ... I am now very fed up with it.

I have read another thread on this for v.9 -- unbelievable!

What would make me want to upgrade? Not a chance.

Is there any point in asking for advice on this ... nope.

[bentleybloke]

I'm on v10 and it works brilliantly well even on Windows 7 running on core i5 laptop (other than inital issues with eset firewall). Startup lightening fast, copy/cut/paste all work well. I've moved over 100 sections with 1000s of products into a new subsection - expecting a crash I took backup - but it worked fine. I had endless issues with v8 and eventually gave up, sticking with v7 until v9 came out. I rebuilt from scratch in v9 and had a few minor problems but I think it was more to do with my computer and having multiple programs open than Actinic.

[bentleybloke]

May be worth adding that sometimes strange problems can be solved by exporting the catalogue as hierarchical file. If you have Business Plus, license a new site, import recent snapshot then import faulty catalogue hierarchical file. Finally try to do whatever it was that caused the problem before. Sometimes the error list created is useful too.

Right after I posted about my super experiences, I had a problem whereby changing the value of a variable caused Actinic to crash. I resolved it using the above method. The fault log option revealed that it was to do with dicky fragments and an invalid section. Fancy that.

Furthermore, sometimes after you've cut and pasted and it's all gone horribly wrong and everything has vanished... you can do a database compact and restart actinic and most if not all of the stuff you thought you'd lost can reappear. Magic.

I think this piece of music conveys the emotions of editing a catalogue well!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9xPHwHJVY4

You can add some words...

Ac-ti-nic, how are you go-ing to work today? O-K!
I've got lots of pro-ducts to add.
Ac-ti-nic, don't you create any dmp files for me! O-K!
I've added some sections and it's all gone horribly wrong. Huff.
Ha-Ha now take that. I've compact'd your database!

Perhaps I've been watching too much Futurama.

[Truska]

Also had the same problem (V10) - copying a sub-section to the top level.
Compacted database and this did not help.

Restored to last database backup, compacted it and tried again - still got the error.

Restored back yet again and then manually created the new top level section and copied all the sub sections into it - worked fine - then cut the old to level section.

Just goes to emphasis the need to do backups and Snapshots ALL THE TIME.