Help

Maintaining and recovering FileMaker Pro databases
F
ILEMAKER PRO HELP 1204
FileMaker Pro displays the “Name new recovered file” dialog box. The original (damaged)
filename, followed by Recovered, displays for File name (Windows) or Save As (OS
X).
3. Accept the default name, or enter a different name for the recovered file.
4. To have FileMaker Pro use the default file recovery settings (recommended for best results),
make sure that Use advanced options is deselected and then skip to the next step.
To change the recovery settings, select Use advanced options or click Specify, set options,
then click OK. (For more information about advanced recovery options, see
Setting advanced
file recovery options.)
5. Click Save.
6. If you see the Open Encrypted Database dialog box, type the encryption password, then
click OK.
If you don’t know the encryption password, see your database administrator.
You see the progress of the file recovery. When the operation is finished, FileMaker Pro displays
the status of the recovered file. For more information, see
Results of a recover, below.
7. To see a log of the recovery process, click Open Log File.
The Recover.log file displays in a separate window, in tab-delimited format. From left to right the
columns show the date, time, and time zone in which the recovery took place, the filename,
error number, and description of the recovery event. You can save or print this file for further
examination. Then close the window.
The most recent data is added to any existing Recover.log file information, so you may need to
scroll to the end of the file to see the results of the latest file recovery.
Note These steps apply only to files in FileMaker Pro 12 format. To use these steps to recover a file
created in a different FileMaker
Pro format, you must convert the file to the FileMaker Pro 12 format.
If the file is too damaged to convert, recover the file in the appropriate version of the application. See
Converting files from FileMaker Pro 11 and earlier.
Results of a recover
After a file is recovered, FileMaker Pro displays status information. What you see depends on the
result of the recovery operation and the options that were used. The following table shows all
possible results that could be displayed for each database component that can be recovered. (For
information about these settings, see
Setting advanced file recovery options.)
For this component One of these messages is displayed
File blocks • Scanned and rebuilt “<nnn>” blocks, dropped “<nnn>” invalid data
blocks
• Copied as is
• Copied logical structure
Schema • Scanned fields and tables, “<nnn>” missing fields added
• NOT scanned
Structure • Scanned; “<nnn>” items modified
• NOT scanned