No not Reading, ‘Riting, ‘Rithmetic. These are the 3 R’s of Mac file maintenance:
REBUILD, RESORT, REOPEN
When are these necessary?
- As part of monthly maintenance, along with Verifying the file and checking your backup
- When you are upgrading a file, both before and after
- When Roundtripping a file to QB for Windows, both before and after
- When your file seems to be unusually slow, or crashes often
- When new Customers don’t get slotted into correct order with the rest of your list.
- When balances on your Chart of Accounts seem odd
- When transactions appear to be missing
To perform these steps:
- Rebuild the file. (If you are using the multi-user version, you will need to be in single user mode and on the server computer.) Go to the File menu, choose Utilities and Rebuild. QuickBooks will ask you to make a backup, you must do so, or it will abort the whole rebuild process. Choose a location for this backup that won’t overwrite your regular backup, or rename it. Depending on your file size, the Rebuild may take 2-45 minutes. *
- After the Rebuild has completed, Resort the Lists, as follows:
- Open the Chart of Accounts from the Company menu. Choose Re-sort List from the Edit menu. Say YOK when QuickBooks asks you if you want to restore the list to the original order. Close the Chart of Accounts.
- Open the Item list from the Lists menu. Chose Re-sort List from the Edit menu. Say OK when QuickBooks asks you if you want to restore the list to the original order. Close the Item List.
- Open the Memorized Transaction list from the Lists menu. Chose Re-sort List from the Edit menu. Say OK when QuickBooks asks you if you want to restore the list to the original order. Close the Memorized Transaction List.
- From the Banking menu, choose Write Checks. Place the cursor in the Payee Field and hit Command ⌘-L – this will display the master Name list. Choose Edit>Re-sort List. Say OK when QuickBooks asks you if you want to restore the list to the original order. Close the Name List. Close the Write Checks Window.
- Close the file, or quit QuickBooks. Re-open the file.
Nine times out of ten, this will cure the any weirdness in your file.
* – what if the rebuild doesn’t complete?
Then it is time to check the QuickBooks log file. The QB log file is located in the root level Library on the Mac, in the Logs Folder. See here for how to access the Library folder, it is a little tricky with Mac version starting with Mountain Lion.