Recently, we’ve been learning about Microsoft Office Accounting 2008 and integration with Business Contact Manager.
There are two Sample Company databases that come with Office Accounting 2008
- SampleProductCompany2008.sbd
- SampleServiceCompany2008.sbd
Each of these sample companies are focused on providing an example of a “Product” based company and a “Service” based company.
The Sample Company databases are both from the Office Accounting 2007 version of the product and will need to be upgraded to the 2008 database schema to run.
In testing Office Accounting 2008 integration with Business Contact Manager in the Domain, we discovered an error where Office Accounting 2008 will not open either Sample Company. The error is replicated as follows.
- Integrate Business Contact Manager and Office Accounting in a domain environment.
- Add a “laptop” to the domain
- Connect Business Contact Manager and Office Accounting to the Remote Database Server in the domain.
- Allow the laptop to use the “Offline database” ability so that it can function when not connected to the domain
- Attempt to Open the Sample Company from the Office Accounting Start screen
- User Account Control will ask for permission to execute a function…
- HOWEVER, the execution is never completed and Office Accounting 2008 fails to open the sample company and returns to the Start screen.
- NOTES: we used a domain account with Local Administrator administrator privileges (in the Local Admins group) on the laptop
SOLUTION:
Assuming that this was a domain related issue in which Office Accounting 2008 did not orient itself to the local database, we logged in locally.
Microsoft Office Accounting stores it’s database files (“locally” by default) in the following location:
C: \ Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data
the two file extensions are .sdb (small business “database”) and .sbl (small business “log”)
After logging on “locally” (NOT ON THE DOMAIN) we attempted to launch the Sample Company from a local administrator account. User Account Control asked for permission to execute a function and we were given this pop-up:
You do not currently have access to this company. Do you want to get access with the owner role?
This pop-up did not appear while we were logged in to the domain (we made multiple attempts)!
We said yes…. let’s go for it and “whalla”, it gave us an additional screen to begin the upgrade process. We are unaware why being logged in to the domain failed to allow us to upgrade the Sample Company database. The user account we were using was in the Local Administrators group on the laptop so it did have the ability (and authority) to upgrade a local database. It was also the owner of the local MSSMLBIZ Instance and the database itself. The other potential reason we consider is that integration with Business Contact Manager on the domain may somehow affect the ability to upgrade. This is unlikely however since the Office Accounting 2008 Start screen is independent of the domain when selecting to open a different Company. So, we are left wondering…???
Here are screen shots:
With all said and done, once the upgrade of the schema was complete we were able to finish the job by moving the data to the current year:
The sample company data will now be moved to the current year. This will only take a moment. When the operation is done the program will have to be restarted.
When you take the time to upgrade the Sample Companies… be sure to upgrade “both of them”. Each Sample Company needs to be upgraded independently… Use the Start screen, select Open Sample Company and then select each of them independently to upgrade.
Go To File | Close Company
From the Start – Microsoft Office Accounting screen | select Open a sample company
select either Service or Product based company to upgrade
Thanks for reading.