Recovering damaged iCash files

This document explains how to recover from a defective iCash file. It is intended for users that have experienced data corruption on their iCash document files and have no recent backup available. Despite iCash tries to secure and protect your data integrity, it is important to create backups regularly to external supports like HDs or DVDs. That will prevent data loss or massive corruption caused by a defective hard drive or a system crash.

An iCash file that has become damaged will typically have symptoms similar to the following:

	The file cannot be opened by the program.
	The program crashes with an error message when the user performs typical operations such as viewing detail information, editing records, generating reports, etc
	The program displays inconsistent information.

iCash built-in recovery tool
When you run into such problems you should first try to recover your file using the built-in iCash recovery tool. It is quite simple, just launch iCash, select the faulty file from the 'Recent Documents' windows and use the "File | Tools | Recover Database" menu. iCash will create a fresh new file and will copy all your data to it. However, if your file is badly damaged this procedure will likely fail and iCash will crash. In such case you will have to use a backup copy as explained below.

Automatic backups
By default (if you haven't deactivated it), iCash performs automatic backups every-time you close a document or open a document that needs low level updates. Those backups are actually copies of the iCash document files without compression.

The backups are created in the '~/Library/Application Support/Maxprog/iCash/Backups' folder on Mac OS X and the 'My Documents\Maxprog\iCash\Backups' directory on Windows. (Note that on Mac OS X older versions backups may be created in the '~/Documents/Maxprog/iCash/' folder). Each document backup is saved to a folder with the same name. Only the 16 more recent backup files are maintained. They are labeled with the backup date, for example '2005-10-13 19-43-09' which means 'October 13, 2005 19:43:09'.

For example our Backup folder for our accounting files looks like this:
('~/Library/Application Support/Maxprog/iCash/Backups/Maxprog LLC/' folder)

It is then very easy to copy any of those files to your working directory. Try with the newest first, then rename it and use it as usual. If it doesn't open, try with previous one. Alway perform copies, don't simply move the file.

If this method fails and you are using iCash 3.1.3 or higher, you have a second chance. You can use the XML dump files iCash creates each time you open a document. They are stored in the '~/Library/Application Support/Maxprog/iCash/XML Dumps' folder on Mac OS X and in the 'My Documents\Maxprog\iCash\XML Dumps' directory on Windows. (Note that on Mac OS X older versions XML dump files may be stored in the '~/Documents/Maxprog/iCash/' folder). Again, only the 16 more recent XML dump files are maintained. They are labeled with the backup date, for example '2005-10-13 19-43-09' which means 'October 13, 2005 19:43:09'. You can use those files to rebuild your original document. You just need to launch iCash, select the 'File | Import | XML Dump' menu and open the XML dump file of your choice - try most recent first. A whole new document will be created with your data.

Note that this automatic backup system is useless if you lose your whole hard drive. It is recommended to perform backups to an external drive regularly. Also note that if you have deactivated automatic backups from the iCash preferences you will no longer be able to take advantage of this feature.