Sidekick 98 - Address.SKCARD - Corrupted

[wormguy41]

I don't have a back up! (Don't say it, I know)
There is only about 5 years of info at stake.
I saved this file (Address.SKCARD) last night and today
Sidekick doesn't reconize it.
It appears to me that there is an index in the front of this file that need to be regenerated.
Does anyone have any experience doing this?
Any help will be appreciated! Thanks - wormguy41

 

[james33]

Dear wormguy41,

You say that it is corrupted, could you please give us a little more information:
1. Where were you saving it to (A floppy or the hard disk)?
2. What version of Sidekick are you using?
3. Windows95/98/2000/XP?
4. What is the exact wording of the error Message?

You will have to forgive me for asking these questions it is only that I have found it makes solving the problem much easier if we both know what we are dealing with.
Regards Jim
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[wormguy41]

Hi Jim,
Thanks for your interest.
I'm using: Windows 2000 - Sidekick 98

The file is on Hard Drive C

The error message is "Not a valid card file"

I can open the file using WordPad. It appears like there is an index at the front of the file. When comparing it to other Sidkick card files it also looks like a portion of the index is missing.

 

[james33]

Dear wormguy41,
The top of the file contains the names of the Labels that are available in that cardfile but the first few letters in the file are SKW300 followed by a lot of 00 's in Hexadecimal and lots of other bits and pieces including the label names then the Index occurs then the fields and finally the Data
This when I examined it in a hex aditor XVI32 version 2.21.

What makes you think it is corrupted when you view it in Wordpad or Notepad?
Be very careful about naming your Fields as characters like
#
@
or Similar will corrupt the Cardfile if subsequently edited.

You didn't save your changes when prompted on closing it in WordPad which would, if you had accidentally altered anything make it an invalid Cardfile + I think even saving it back IF YOU HAVE ALTERED IT AND THEN DELETED THE ALTERATION can be fatal, as I have just this minute tested on one of mine (a copy obviously).
There is one other option and that is to copy and paste the File in Explorer and then rename it with a .txt extension, you can then use Word97/2000 to recover text from a file.
Or even better Memos|Memo|Import it into Sidekick as a memo so you can do a Search and Replace for the Rubbish and then redo your Cardfile at your Leisure!
HTH ;-)
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!