Products disappeared from Actinic department list!

[carolyn]

Swapped between my 2 sites today to process orders. When I swapped back it gave the following error message:

"Error occurred while adding products into the tree display. Error retrieving record."

Lots of departments are completely empty. Seems random...some are fine, some are gone. Have they gone for good or can I try to retrieve?

Any help gratefully received...thank you.

[leehack]

Your previous snapshot will still have the products listed, just import that. Snapshot before you try though just in case something untoward is happening, take a backup of your site1 folder also. A simple close down and reopen may also solve it.

[carolyn]

I'm stupid, I know

That's the problem, I don't have a recent snapshot!

[leehack]

You are probably stuffed then to be honest and just learnt a huge lesson. If you can find nothing on your system to correct this, database backup, snapshot etc. then you are probably going to have to copy-paste from your website and recreate everything manually, it's the only option if nothing is recoverable on the desktop. DO NOT UPLOAD during this process.

There is a tutorial on my site about snapshotting your site and protecting your investment, i'd strongly recommend having a read if you haven't grasped how important backups are.

[carolyn]

oops

used to backup every day and just got lazy as I never needed it. Most of what is gone is able to be copied and pasted from other departments...just a few things gone entirely. Will redo and backup immediately!!

[leehack]

If not too bad then, i'd see this as a friendly warning for the future.

I guess there is a large possibility that your backups are all done on one PC and all stored in same place? PC burgled or fire suffered at location and the lot gone?

Read the tutorial when you get 5 mins, it will help you to set things up with a guaranteed method to get things back. I'd also suggest looking into something like Acronis 10 - a truly excellent product.

[carolyn]

thanks

Thanks, will do.
Carolyn

[carolyn]

sorted!

unbelievably it has resolved itself! I went to pick up my daughters from school, rebooted when I got home (about the 10th time today) and actinic opened without the error message. I was able to copy the actiniccatalog.mdb file as a safety net. I then did compact databases.
All I have had to do is a lot of tidying up from the copying and pasting I had done earlier thinking the products were gone. They were in fact just hidden. Some sort of glitch in actinic.
I am going to back up now every night!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for all your help...

[leehack]

LOL Carolyn a great end to the problem there, bet you are smiling like a Cheshire cat! You will probably find Windows has run a scandisk for you on boot up, you just didn't see it. I would still get a snapshot off asap and store off system, i'd expect the hard drive to give up at some stage, not definite but likely.

PS - You lucky sod!