Damaged Sidekick 98 datafile

[Doug1]

I have a damaged sidekick data file. The file loads fine, but the data spills over into the next file and is unuseable. I am hoping that there is a fix for this. I belive that the file exceeded the size limit and when that happened it went crazt.
Can anyone help me with this?

Thaks in advance for your help.

Doug

 

[james33]

Dear Doug1,
It seems strange that the file was corrupted by being too big as I believe the Limit on Data in a CardField is 256 spaces or characters per field (See Help|Index and then maximum) and 100 fields per card and 90,000 Cards per Cardfile (though I myself have never.. surprisingly tried that amount!
FIRST, using Windows Explorer make a backup copy of the original preferably some other place than on the Computer you are using.
Have you tried scanning the Disc that the File is on to try to repair any damage, or if that fails, to at least recover some of the Data you could try
1. Creating a new Cardfile that has the same fields.
DO NOT COPY the original, create it from scratch.
2. Then move all the Cards from the damaged one to the newly created one (Save the empty new one under a different name first).
HTH
If not post again with more details of Operating System, Sidekick version, and number of Cards/Fields.

Regards Jim
Check the FAQ area of this Forum for answers (If there are any FAQs!) , it could save you a lot of time and effort and means that links are more likely to be current. Please 'Comment' on them if they are not!

 

[james33]

Dear Doug1,
I am at present researching a similar situation and the problem seems to have arisen by the person who was using the Cardfile using a reserved character '#' in the name of a field, this made it impossible for the Data to be exported to another format as it was not recognised as a valid Sidekick file.
Upon changing the field name and replacing the '#' with 'No' I found that a situation arose similar to your own (i.e. Data spilled over into another Card).
I will be getting to grips with this over the next few days (It is St. Patricks Day here in Ireland so not much will be done today!!!)
I will post back here as soon as I have some kind of answer. Regards Jim
Check the FAQ area of this Forum for answers (If there are any FAQs!) , it could save you a lot of time and effort and means that links are more likely to be current. Please 'Comment' on them if they are not!

 

[james33]

Dear Doug1,
Further to that last post,
You say in your post that
"the data spills over into the next file and is unuseable"
Do you mean that it spills over into the next CARD and is unusable?
Or the next CardFile?
Could you also tell us what version of Sidekick and what version of Windows you are using + how many Fields and Records are there in your Cardfile? Regards Jim
Check the FAQ area of this Forum for answers (If there are any FAQs!) , it could save you a lot of time and effort and means that links are more likely to be current. Please 'Comment' on them if they are not!

 

[Doug1]

Thanks for your help so far. I am using sidekick 98 and I am using Windows XP. The problem showed up while under Windows 98SE. The file has over 300 cards entered and each card has 21 fields.

Thanks again for your help.

Doug

 

[james33]

Dear Doug,
When you say that the data spills over do you mean each Card's data.
Could you give us an example of the field names and some sample data (imaginary but using the characters that you usually use)
What were your fieldnames before, as the amount of cards in your cardfile is hardly sufficient to cause that.
I have cardfiles at work that operate beautifully and there are over 8,000 cards with 34 fields in each with well a lot in each field and I regularly merge them too albeit with 30 or 40 Cards and have no problems it all operates quite logically. Regards Jim
Check the FAQ area of this Forum for answers (If there are any FAQs!) , it could save you a lot of time and effort and means that links are more likely to be current. Please 'Comment' on them if they are not!

 

[Doug1]

Typo - The file is over 3000 cards in size. Although yours is larger, so I guess it is not the size that is causing this, although I thought Sidekick has a maximum size limit.

The information in card is in the wrong fiels and some of the information from one card is located on other cards.

Doug

 

[james33]

Dear Doug1,
That sounds a bit too far gone to rescue and all I can think of now are WILD ideas,

Silly question I know but do you have any Backups?
and is the information Very Very Important?

If it is v.important and you are prepared to spend some time on it then try the following
(Always remember to backup the original file, twice if you are like me)
Then:
If you remember what I said about the # character you could try to see what re-instating it in different FieldNames does and then print out the result if it works out.
Regards Jim
Check the FAQ area of this Forum for answers (If there are any FAQs!) , it could save you a lot of time and effort and means that links are more likely to be current. Please 'Comment' on them if they are not!