File Corruption?

[Sue]

I got a Microsoft Money 2005 "internal error" message, which shuts down the
program every time I tried to generate the "Tax-related transaction" report
and started shutting down when I accessed "Help" (program, including "help"
and other reports had been working fine). MS support said it was a program
file problem and to reinstall or upgrade to Money 2006 (at my suggestion as I
was considering it anyway).

I upgraded to 2006 nd continue to experience the same problem with the
tax-related transaction and other reports. MS support now says that it is
file corruption (I was able to open a new, empty file, add some taxable type
investment transactions and generate the tax-related transactions report) and
that I must export and then import all of my accounts into a new, empty 2006
file. (BTW, back up files seem to have the same issue with the tax-related
reports, but not necessarily with "help" or other reports).

1. Does that sound right?
2. Is there any way around the export/import thing, which involves years of
transactions and accounts?
3. I've seen some software available online to repair corrupt files. Do
any of them work?
4. Can I prevent this from happening again?

TIA,
Sue

 

[Mark]

You can try the divide and conquer approach to see if you can identify the
account and then the transaction causing the problem.

But this might take as long as export/import into a new file.

To do this:
Make a copy of your file and always work from copies.
Open Money and Delete half of your accounts.
See if the problem reproduces
If it does, then open another copy of the original file (delete the other
copy) and try deleting the other half and confirm that the problem does NOT
reproduce.
If the problem does not reproduce, then the corruption is in the accounts
deleted.
In another copy of the file delete half of those accounts
Repeat until you narrow it down to one specific account.
NOTE: You may be able to short cut this if you know that this problem
started happening after creating a specific account. (try just deleting that
account).
Once you have an account identified, start deleting transactions in the same
manner
Most likely it will be some recent transaction (or at least one entered
since the report last worked properly).

Once you've identified the specific transaction, verify that this is the
source of the problem in a copy of the original Money file and then you can
either use this file as your file or make the correction in the original (be
sure to always have a good backup strategy - which Money 2006 will help with
due to it's new backup options).

-Mark