Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

Jesper's blog about integrating with Office Accounting

This blog discusses how to write applications that integrate with Office Accounting.
Moving the company data to another machine

This is a question that comes up a lot in the news groups.

"Why can I not restore the company on a new machine or after installing Vista?" OR "Why can't I open the company with the old company file?"

Depending on the scenario you get an error "This operation can only be performed while connected to a company on a local machine." or perhaps "Current version of the accounting application does not support this operation.".

The issue is that the company file (sbc-file) is really just a shortcut pointing to the database and computer that stores the actual data. So if you resuse the sbc-file when doing a restore on a new computer or when the computer name has changed after installing a new operating system, the file will still be pointing to the old computer. The error messages are because you cannot restore to a different computer than the one you are currently logged on to, or when you are using the Express version which does not support remote operations.

The solution to this is easy - you can edit the computer name in the sbc-file or in case of restore, simply enter a new sbc-file name in restore dialog instead of using the existing name.

This is what a company file looks like when you edit it in Notepad:

    database=sampleservicecompany

    server=mycomputer\MSSMLBIZ,5356

Posted: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 10:51 AM by Jesper Birk Olsen

Comments

DPillow said:

I have an installation of Accounting Pro 2008 on a SBS 2003 R2 server. It has 5 Accounting users that are connected at one time. The program works great but the only method to backup the company data is to log on to the server as admin and run it from there.

I have sucessfully coppied that database to another server used for testing with no problems. I have a Vista box connected to that server and it runs great.

Did I do something in a different manner than everyone else?

# March 20, 2008 11:00 AM

DPillow said:

Well, So Much for the sucess statement above. I don't know what happened to create my problem but it did.

Here is the error message that shows up whenever I attempt to restore the database.

Directory lookup for the file “C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Business Contact Manager\MSSmallBusiness.mdf” failed with the operating system error 5. (Access Is Denied)

File “MSSmallBusiness_dat” cannot be restored to “C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Business Contact Manager\MSSmallBusiness.mdf”. Use with MOVE to identify a valid location for the file.

Directory lookup for the file “C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Business Contact Manager\MSSmallBusiness.ldf” failed with the operating system error 5. (Access Is Denied)

File “MSSmallBusiness_dat” cannot be restored to “C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Business Contact Manager\MSSmallBusiness.ldf”. Use with MOVE to identify a valid location for the file.

Problems were identified while planning for the RESTORE statement. Previous massages provide details. RESTORE DATABASE is terminating abnormally.

I think I understand why this is occurring but I am not certain how to resolve the errors. Can anyone of the Microsoft folks help me with this?

Thanks,

Dennis Pillow

# April 3, 2008 10:30 PM

marketus said:

this is probably the wrong forum to ask this but I cannot find the answer anywhere else.

I installed the trial of BCM and sba 2008.  when I try to inegrate the two I get an error saying the backup path is too long.

I shortened it and still get the same error.

any help is much appreciated.

# April 11, 2008 8:28 AM

aforcier said:

Hi,

 are there a way of using the SDK to add fields avaalaible in the Word templates (smart documents).  let's say we need a field in the invoice.

thanks

al

# August 26, 2009 8:35 AM
Anonymous comments are disabled
Page view tracker