Item List Index
It was a blustery day and our sleuth was warming himself by the fire with a cup of Earl Grey when the telephone rang and the caller cried out “Help”. After calming the woman down the Data Detective determined that the caller had experienced a failing message during the initial phase of her QuickBooks backup. It wasn’t long until our sleuth arrived on scene and began his investigative efforts by making a Windows safety copy of the clients Company file, following which he began another backup in order to identify the cause of the error. When the backup failed the Data Detective reviewed the QBWin.log file and discovered the error shown in the title figure to be the culprit.
The cause of the error was a type of corruption associated with the indexes for the QuickBooks Item list. In databases, such as QuickBooks, an index points or refers to one part of a table. These indexes are designed to help you get faster results, when performing a specific function within the program, but these indexes can get corrupted due to software faults.
Fortunately the Data Detective knows that this type of error is easily corrected by forcing QuickBooks to re-index the corrupted list. In order to accomplish the repair our sleuth undertook the following steps:
- Opened the corrupted list (the Item list was the culprit in this case).
- Check the box to Include Inactive(s) in the list (located at the bottom of the Item list).
- Click the Item menu button at the bottom of the list.
- From the Item menu, select Flat View.
- With the menu still open, click the Re-sort List option.
- When QuickBooks displays the message “Are you sure you want to return this list to its original order”, click OK.
- Close the list.
- Re-open the Item list and list menu, and repeat steps 5, 6 and 7 above.
- Run the Verify Data utility.
As noted in step 8 you should repeat the resort process; personal experience has taught the Data Detective that you normally need to re-sort lists a 2nd time. Typically it is NOT necessary to run the Rebuild utility, the Verify utility will confirm that the resort process satisfactorily regenerated list indexes and resolved the error(s). If this type of error was your only reported problem in the QBWin.log file, this final Verify should return the message that “QuickBooks Found No Problems with Your Data.”
In some cases index errors can be corrected by creating and then restoring a Portable Company File which re-indexes the Company file as it is being restored; however, in this case that is not required for a solution. After the Verify completed satisfactorily, the client was then able to proceed with a normal backup without further incident.
Another case solved by the Data Detective. Now that you understand how indexes work and that they are a frequent cause of list corruption, and you know the steps to resolving these errors, you too can easily deal with such corruptions; after all, “it’s Elementary My Dear Watson.”