ShoWorks Help Articles

Custom reports missing after ShoWorks install or update, or changing computers

Summary:

There are two reasons for custom reports missing in ShoWorks:

1) When ShoWorks is running on more than one computer, one user may have some custom reports not available to another user on a different machine OR...

2) When updating to newer versions of ShoWorks or reinstalling, you will loose all custom reports that you have created if you attempt to run an update patch (or install) more than once without first opening ShoWorks before running the update again.

Cause:

Custom reports by default, are stored in the actual ShoWorks program file and NOT the data file. This is a limitation by Microsoft Access which ShoWorks runs in the background and cannot be overridden at this time.

Solution if reports are missing because you are changing computers or upgrading to a new version:

See the article: How to backup reports or changing computers and sharing reports on multiple computers

Solution if reports are missing unexpectedly after running an update or re-installing ShoWorks:

Note: ShoWorks 2006 and prior users need to substitute "2006" in place of "2009" in the instructions below.

1. Using "My Computer" locate C:\Program Files\ShoWorks 2009\BACKUP
2. You need to look for files that over 15,000KB or 15MB in size. The name of this file can be either "sw.mdb" OR "ShoWorks 2009.swkdb" OR "ShoWorks 2009.001" OR anything like this. You may have to try each of these but try in the order above (you may try looking for the file that has the most recent date 'Last Modified'). One of these files will have your reports. You will need to rename the files to have an extension of ".mdb". For example. "ShoWorks.mdb". 
3. Once you have renamed this file, select Start>>All Programs>>ShoWorks 2009 and run ShoWorks 
4. In ShoWorks, select Reports>>Manage Reports.
5. Click "Import" 
6. Navigate and locate the file above and click "Open". If there are no reports, then repeat with one of the other files. You will have the reports in one of them.

Prevention:

Back up your reports by selecting Reports then Manage Reports then clicking Backup All.  Follow the onscreen instructions for information on how to restore these reports to other copies of ShoWorks.