If you are like most Apple product users, you expect the stability of the Mac operating platform to be a perfect measure by which your QB-Mac should normally run, so you don’t anticipate needing to ever restore your QuickBooks Company file from a backup. Still the same you know that backups of critical data are encouraged by all hardware and software vendors, so you have undoubtedly configured QB-Mac preferences to back-up regularly, perhaps at the end of every use.
Prior to 2013, QuickBooks for Mac made ‘backup files’ the old fashioned way (kind of like the way QB-Windows does). The software made a compressed copy of your QB-Mac data using a specific file compression algorithm; when you got ready to restore the file, QB-Mac would decompress the file using the same algorithm and thus you had a full size file again.
But for the last few years, QB-Mac has taken advantage of ‘Apple’ technology called disc imaging, and now any/every-time you make a routine backup, an image of your actual data is made and stored (at your designated backup location) as a *.dmg file. As a part of this disk image file, your Company file data and your QuickBooks Attached Documents are both contained in the *.dmg file.
Apple disk image (.dmg) files are easily mounted within the Finder and include all the necessary formatting information for restoration, and because they can be securely protected they allow you to easily send data that can be restored by another QB-Mac user. But this technology also speeds-up the process of ‘making the image’ and ‘restoring the image’ greatly. It is an exact replication, closer in design to ‘making a windows copy’ of the data, then a ‘windows compressed back-up’. (I know it just irks you Apple users for me to even remotely compare anything Apple to anything Windows, ‘get over it.’)
Well despite all this ‘Apple stability, let’s look at what to do should the unexpected happy; I mean sooner or later you may need or want to restore (mount) one of your QB-Mac *.dmg (disk image) files. Here are the recommended steps to restore your QB-Mac data from a *.dmg file:
- Locate your most recent *.dmg backup disk image and double-click it to mount it (shown as # 1 in the depiction). Mac will open a new window containing your Company file, attached documents (if you use them) and a PDF containing step-by-step instructions on how to restore your Company file and attachments (shown as # 2 in the depiction).
- You must copy your Company file from the disk image to a directory on your hard drive in order to open the file with QB-Mac, you cannot open your Company file directly from the disc image because it is made read-only as part of the image process,
- Drag the Company file with a *.qb2013, *.qb2014 or *.qb2015 extension) to the directory where you want it to be located,
- If you use Attached Documents you must also drag the Attached Documents folder to the same folder where you just located your Company file,
- Open QuickBooks for Mac,
- Open your Company file from the location where you restored it,
- Go to QuickBooks and then select Preferences,
- Under Preferences select Attachments,
- Choose the Attached Documents Library menu,
- Click on the option Select Existing,
- Navigate to the folder where you restored your Attached Documents and select them,
- Click Open,
- When you close the Preferences window your changes will be saved.
- You have now successfully restored your Company file and Attached Documents.
You, your QuickBooks for Mac, and Your Apple Mac are all back to being 'MacHappy' again. Downright Applelicious!