[moneydance] Oh, there it is...

[Dave]

On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 1:00 AM, Stan <stanf76180-mdnc at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Well, I've had Moneydance running for several hours.  I don't really
> remember if I made any entries or not.  Oh, yeah, I reconciled one account
> and added a finance charge to it.  Something else, too, but I can't
> remember.  I have a stack of receipts to enter, and I looked in the
> taskbar
> to find Moneydance, but didn't see it there.
>
> So I launched it.  And there's that box I was just talking about last
> week:
>
> =====
> [?]
> Your autosave file is newer than your data file.
> Would you like to use the autosave instead?
> [Yes] [No]
> =====
>
> So apparently, I was already running Moneydance.  I swear its icon wasn't
> in the taskbar, though.
>
> What I *want* is to unclick the icon that started this program a second
> time.  A "Cancel" button would do wonders for my comfort level right now.
> I guarantee that whichever button I click on, I am going to lose whatever
> data entry I might have done earlier today.  I'd be just as happy to click
> on "File... Save," but I can't do that until I make this question box go
> away.
>
> Looking in the data folder, I see MoneyDance.md and -MoneyDance.md, both
> with a "Date Modified" from this morning, and I see MoneyDance.md^ from
> just a few minutes ago.  Okay, surely that's the one I want, and surely
> that's the autosave file.  Okay, I'll say "Yes."
>
> Cool... Although I still don't know if I answered the question correctly
> or
> not, it prompted me for a password and I clicked on "Cancel."  It popped
> up
> some kind of exception error and prompted me again.  This time when I
> clicked on "Cancel," it went away, and my register is there, unharmed (I
> can see the finance charge I entered earlier).
>
> Now, if I can just save my notes for later and remember that I did, I can
> save my butt next time around.
>
> Stan
>

What operating system are you running? If I had to guess I would say that MD
was not already running at the point when you opened it the second time. I
might also guess that it was closed without saving the data file. It sounds
like MD just silently crashed or that you closed it by mistake without
saving or something else happened that caused MD to stop running.

When you opened it and were presented with the  dialog message "Your
autosave file is newer than your data file", MD is operating exactly as it
was designed to. I do not see any reason to make this more complex than
simply telling it "yes, use the autosaved file." This message has nothing to
do with multiple instances of MD being open at the same time afaik.

Given your situation, you may want to set the autosave interval to every 3
minutes. And then investigate why MD is closing unexpectedly. It may be an
issue with JVM heap size (memory)... maybe Java is running out of memory and
crashing... I'm just taking a wild guess. How much memory does your computer
have? Can you find any relevant log files? If you are on Windows, check the
Event Viewer and look for Java related errors. I can't offer any more
suggestions, but maybe MD tech support can.