A recent online BCM uprgard deleted exisiting Bus Contacts. Help!

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Guest

I recently followed an Microsoft online "Updates Available" prompt to update
my Business Contact Manager. A few days later I clicked on "Business
contacts" to do a mass mailing and all the old contacts were no longer there.
Only the business contacts entered, since the update, were present.

Did the update process automatically create a "holding file" for these
businesss contacts that I can access and reload into BCM?

To make matters worse, my Outlook.pst and Outlook.backup files only reload
my Personal Contacts, not my Business Contacts.

Any help would be appreciated. I am a reasonably experienced user but this
one has me baffled.

Thanks.
 
If the current version of BCM your running is V2 is should have created a
backup fo the files as a *.msbcm file under the following location
C:\Documents and Settings\<\My Documents\Business Contact Manager\Backups.I
fthis file is present you can restore the data by going to
Buisness Tools > Manage database > Restore Database
 
Hi Raul,

Thanks for your post.
My BCM version is 2.00.4013.00, which is version 2, correct?
I looked for the file you mentioned, after selecting "show hidden files and
folders" in Windows Explorer. I did not find a Business Contact Manager
folder at all under C/Documents & Settings/Owner.
I did find a Business Contact Manager folder under C/Program Files/Microsoft
Small Business, but there was no Backups folder.
Finally I did a search on my C drive for "*.msbcm", but nothing was found.

I do have a bcm file on a CD from several months ago. This file was created
by exporting my BCM data. Do you think it could recover at least some of my
info?

Thanks for the help.
ExplorAir
 
Hi Raul,
Me again. Hope I'm not too much of a bother.
I was reading some other posts and one of them triggered a memory that I
opted to "create a new database" when uploading the BCM update. Wrong choice?!
Do you think this explains why there is no *.msbcm to be found?
I also see that another user restored his computer to a couple of days prior
to the update. Is that an idea for me? I have XP Home Small Business 2003.
Thanks again.
 
Hi

Restoring your computer to a previous date will not help becasue it only
help restore program that were present on that date and not data.Also if you
had created a new database after insatlling the update the old database
should still be avaliable you could check if the same by removing the
existing database by going to file > data file management > remove BCM.Once
this is done go to file > data file managment > click on add and select BCM
this should bring up the wizard and select the option to use and existing
data base and see if it restores your old data

Hope this helps
 
Hi Raul,
Thanks for your posts. They are very helpful.
After days of discouragement I have renewed hope. As you can see from the
thread below this one, I have found a file named MSBusinessContactManager.mdf
that was last modified on the date when I updated BCM. It seems to be the
right siize too - 194MB - so I think it's the "lost" database.
Will the wizard automatically select this database when I follow the steps
you suggest, or will I have to select it? I'm a bit nervous proceeding with
anything right now.
Thanks again.
 
Raul,

Some good news! I have been able to restore my database thanks your
suggestions and also help from Luther.

For your info and for anyone else who might run into this problem I found my
old database as an <.mdf file> located at C/Documents &
Settings/Owner/Local Settings/Application
Data/Microsoft/MSBusinessContactManager.mdf.

I was then able to restore it using the following commands: File>Data File
Management>Add> at which point I selected the MSBCM file when the wizard came
up, not the MSBCM2 file, which was the new database created after the
upgrade. The wizard took care of the rest.

This step did replace MSBCM2 with MSBCM, as there was no "combine" option,
so I then manually typed in the few new MSBCM2 contacts that had been added
since the update. A much smaller job that rebuilding the old database.

So I have finally have my database back and fully functional.

Thanks again for your help Raul and Luther!!!
 
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