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From: libby@mips.com (Jeff Libby)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: Dollars & Sense 4.x Archives - What good are they ?
Message-ID: <44440@mips.mips.COM>
Date: 2 Jan 91 22:36:00 GMT
References: <1991Jan2.203320.29488@spectrum.CMC.COM>
Sender: news@mips.COM
Reply-To: libby@mips.com (Jeff Libby)
Organization: Mips Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 30

In article <1991Jan2.203320.29488@spectrum.CMC.COM>, lars@spectrum.cmc.com 
	(Lars Poulsen) writes:
> The Dollars and Sense program maintains two years of active data in its
> file. When the new year arrives, no new transactions can be posted,
> until the old year has been "closed"; a procedure which includes
> "archiving" the old "last year" so that the year just ended can become
> "last year". This procedure produces an "archive file" in a proprietary
> format, which must be "unarchived" in order to read it. The problem is
> that I have never managed to succesfully unarchive one of these files.

The archive file seems to just be a Dollars and Sense data file.  So rather
than trying to unarchive the archive file, just open the archive directly
(close the current data file first, if it's already open).  You'll see a
warning not to change anything in the archive, after which you can do
anything to the archive that you can do to your active data file.  This
includes generating and exporting reports.

Despite the warning, you can edit an archive file.  However, if you change
anything in an archive that changes the end-of-year account balances for
assets or liabilities, you'll need to update the starting balances in the
current data file by hand.

I think that unarchiving is only useful if you archive away some of the
current or last year's data to reduce file sizes and speed things up, and
then want access to the archived stuff.

==========
Jeff Libby
Mips Computer Systems
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