User Support Forum

After I download and install the new Maintenance Release (dated 11-2-04) for version 9, I get an error when I try to reindex the Accounting Module files. The error indicates that a file is not accessible, possibly because of another user, but the Power Church software is installed on a single standalone computer with only 1 user at a time accessing the software. I have verified that I can reindex without errors prior to installing the maintenance release. As soon as I install the maintenance release without changing anything else, I get the reindexing error. I have also tried to use the "Reindex All" option and the external reindexing application. All attempts to reindex the Accounting files gives the same error about a file not being accessible. I am running Power Church on Windows XP SP2. I have even tried to do a complete new reinstall in a different subdirectory, verify no errors with reindexing, and then apply the maintenance release and I immediately get the reindexing error again. Has anyone else reported this problem?

James,

You might want to have a look at the security/permissions of all the files. Ensure that your user has permission to modify them.

Perhaps XP SP2 did something?

Were any other changes made to the computer just prior to the install of the mr?

A few thoughts.

Jeff

I am running the workstation with full administrator rights under WinXP Pro SP2 and I am running the Power Church sofware with all rights active for my user account. To recap procedure done to troubleshoot this issue:

I installed new version 9 software and updated existing Power Church v8.5 files. I can reindex all files without any problem. I made changes to files and could still reindex all files without a problem. I downloaded and installed the MR dated 11-2-04 for version 9. Without changing anything in the Power Church files, I tried to do a reindex and got the error in the Account Module reindex option. I can reindex other modules, but the Accounting Module always gives the error. If you do "ALL Modules" you will get the error when it goes through the Accounting Module. I have tried this on 2 different workstations (both running WinXP Pro SP2 but totally different hardware) with the same results. I have also tried the "external" reindexing executable file with the same results. I have also tried restarting the workstations and still get the same error each time I tried to run the reindexing option for the Accounting Module. If I simply copy a backup of all the files prior to the MR install, the reindex will work fine again. I have even tried downloading the MR a second time and repeat the installation process with the same results. It appears to be something different in how the MR is trying to open one of the Accounting files exclusively to rebuild the index file.

I have not found a log file yet that will tell me specifically which file PowerChurch is having a problem with during the reindex process. I do limited programming with Visual FoxPro (mainly have developed applications in the DOS FoxPro v2.6) and I have tried to reindex copies of the Accounting Module files to find a corrupted file after the MR installation, but all the copied files reindex okay while running Visual FoxPro outside of the PowerChurch software. The next step is to try the "reindex" command from within the Database Manager window for the Accounting Module files and see if I can find a file that will not reindex. As stated in my previous message, I did try the install multiple times on the 2 different hardware platforms and got the same results each time.

Any other suggestions or ideas to try? I have not yet called Tech Support about this issue, I thought I would see if I could get it resolved through the Forum discussions first or see if I could find any other reference to this problem or a similar problem on the Support Website.

I have done some additional testing with these results:

I installed a fresh copy of v9 into a test subdirectory and chose the option NOT to upgrade a previous version. I verified that reindexing worked correctly. I then installed the MR dated 11-02-04 into this new version that did not have any data in it. I tried the reindexing option again with this fresh install without converted data and it worked okay!!!! Apparently I must have something wrong with my converted data ... I did convert existing data in each of my previous tests. I tried copying my current working copy of v9 (pcplus.exe dated 09-24-04) into another test subdirectory, verified that reindexing worked okay with this version and then applied the MR dated 11-02-04 to this version. I got the reindexing error again as in previous tests ... There is not an error number ... only an application "warning" box from PowerChurch Plus 9 ... that includes the following text from my last test:

WARNING: One or more files could not be reindexed. One possible cause of this problem is another user logged into PowerChurch Plus while you are attempting this procedure. Please make sure that there are no other users running PowerChurch Plus and attempt this procedure again.

If you continue to get this error message and no other users are using PowerChurch Plus, please contact technical support.

11/08/04 11:02:25 PM Begin Indexing Accounting
11:02:25 PM Problems with the Chart of Accounts have been detected
11:02:27 PM End Indexing

I am the only user running the PowerChurch software on a standalone computer when I am getting this error message.

I have tried reindexing the FAACCTS.dbf file manually within the Database Manager window and do not get an error. For additional background information, my Chart of Accounts prior to upgrade to v9 did not match the default distribution of account numbers as listed in the users manual. I have changed my distribution of account numbers to match the suggested list in the users manual including using the "Transfer" account number range. I have changed / moved account numbers to get those outside the default ranges back into the recommended account number range distribution ... and I do not have any problems reindexing my updated Chart of Accounts while using the original installation of v9 and converted and updated data from v8.5. The pcplus.exe in the original v9 installation is dated 9-24-04 in my program subdirectory. After I install the maintenance release, the pcplus.exe file is dated 11-02-04 as shown on the Maintenance Release web page. What other files are getting changed during the Maintenance Release installation other than copying a newer pcplus.exe file? Apparently the new pcplus.exe (11-02-04) file or some other file is looking at the Chart of Accounts differently than the original pcplus.exe (09-24-04) file or whatever other file(s) that got changed when the maintenance release was installed. Does this help to narrow down the possible cause of my problem??? So far, I have not encountered any problems in adding / changing data in the v9 installation where I have not installed the maintenance release. I have had activity in Accounting, Payroll and Accounts Payable without any error messages or problems that I have seen while printing reports or printing checks. I want to install the maintenance release in my production version of the software but I have to get this reindexing problem resolved before I can apply the maintenance release to my "live" data .... Thanks for any suggestions or ideas on where to look next to locate and fix the problem ... If someone from Tech Support needs to contact me directly on this, I will be happy to provide my email and phone information to them ... Thanks again for any assistance in getting this resolved.

James,

You've done a lot of good troubleshooting.

Time to contact tech support. That's what they are there for.

I think you have a bona fide data problem and they can solve it, but will probaby need a copy of your data.

Jeff

James,

We added a check in the 11/2 MR to detect if a user had a problem with their chart of accounts. We found in an earlier version of 9 that it was possible to change an account number and leave the trailing zeros off. For example account 01-1110-000 could be changed to 01-1110-0. We couldn't automatically fix this so we are going to have to have you send in your data so we can figure aout the best way to correct the effected accounts.

We probably need to reword the warning so it doesn't look like someone deosn't have a file open. Right now it is just throwing a generic error flag and that is the warning raised when there is any problem during the reindex.

Please let me know which data file copies you need and I will zip them up for you and email to you. I will try a visual search of copies of the faaccts.dbf and the new famajor.dbf files and look for problems in the data value length using FoxPro len() function to check for missing "0" characters in the acct number data field. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction and I will post an update of the results of searching for a "short" data value in the account number field.

Will be waiting on your instructions for which data files you want zipped up for examination.

Thanks,
James E. Jernigan

James,

We are going to need a backup of all the accounting files, because now in version a change in account numbers can effect account numbers in AP, AR, and PR. If you are comfortable with SQL statements you can do this.

SELECT Acct FROM FaAccts WHERE LEN(RTRIM(Acct)) < 9

If that doesn't list any accounts, you might need to use:

SELECT MajorAcct FROM FaMajor WHERE LEN(RTRIM(MajorAcct)) < 7

This should give you a list of effected accounts. Once you have installed the latest MR you should be able to go into Maintain Chart of Accounts and just fix the account numbers and the program should make the corrections where it needs to. Make a backup first before attempting any of this.

I am comfortable working with the SQL Select statments. I tried the 2 statements you suggested prior to my last post ... but I used the trim() function rather than the rtrim() function ... I will try it again with the rtrim() function. The SQL Select statement returned 0 (Zero) records for each test. I will try it again to see if the rtrim() function gives any different results. I will post results so others can follow our progress.

I repeated the test again using the rtrim() function rather than the trim() function but still got 0 (Zero) records returned from the SQL Query.

I also checked for blank data values by doing a "count for empty(acct)" and "count for empty(majoracct)" after opening each respective file with a "use" statement. I did not find any blank data values in either file.

What do I need to do next?

I was able to identify that the faaccts.dbf / .cdx file is causing the problem somehow ... I took the test subdirectory with the freshly installed and empty data files that would reindex correctly and started copying groups of files from the other test subdirectory that has copies of current "live" data files to that test subdirectory to see which group of files would "break" the reindex process. The AP* and AR* files worked okay, but as soon as I copied the FA* files to the subdirectory, the reindex problem started again. I then replaced all the FA* files with backup copies of the freshly installed, empty FA* files. I then copied the FaAccts.dbf and FaAccts.cdx file to the test subdirectory and tried the reindex function again ... As expected, it gave the reindexing error discussed previously in our messages. The 11/2 MR does not like something in that data or index file ... although I cannot find any data values for the "acct" column that appear to be non-standard as far as number of characters or value of the characters as related to some misorder of the last 3 characters for the "sub-acct" portion of the acct number. What else can I look for in this file? Do you want me to send a copy of the data and index file to the Tech Support group? The file is less than 500 KB in size.

There is one other check that the index routine does, try the following SQL command

SELECT PADR(RTRIM(acct),9,"0") as acct, count(PADR(RTRIM(acct),9,"0")) as cntr FROM FaAccts GROUP BY 1 HAVING cntr > 1

This looks for duplicate account numbers in FaAccts. If this doesn't work, we are going to have you send in an accounting backup to tech support.

This SQL query returned 1 account number as a duplicate. I opened the faaccts.dbf file with the index order set to "faaccts" and did a seek for the acct number value returned from the SQL query and did verify that the acct number value has 2 entries in the faaccts.dbf file.

Now, will I need to do anything other than manually remove one instance of that acct number or do I need to do this through the program interface for "Maintain Chart of Accounts"? What characteristics should I look for to determine which of the 2 entries should be deleted from the faaccts.dbf file?

Thanks for you help ... You did GOOD !!!

You are going to have to manually delete the duplicate entry from the FaAccts table. Do a browse for duplicated accounts (ie BROWSE FOR Acct = "014567000" substituting your account number), you might want to double check FaMajor to make sure their are no duplicates there as well. (ie. BROWSE FOR MajorAcct = "4567000" same account number minus the fund portion) Look at both accounts and determine which account is the real account and should remain and then delete the other. Look to see if their are any beginning balances etc.

You won't be able to do this through the program because it will tell you the account has transactions and will not allow a delete.