FileMaker Pro may become unstable for a number of
reasons and require maintenance or recovery steps to
restore the files to working order. Unexpected
shutdowns of a FileMaker Server while hosting files is
bad and usually leads to immediate, obvious problems or
worse, looming, invisible issues that will impact your
systems at the least opportune time. Although high
transaction volumes in FileMaker files don’t inherently
lead to problems but when file problems occur the
likely hood of disaster is greater. Interruption of
data while it is being written to a FileMaker database
frequently causes corruption in the data, scripts,
tables or even layouts.
How to Tell When FileMaker Has Crashed
FileMaker Pro crashes present themselves in a few different ways. A dialog box saying “File Invoices.FP7 was forceably closed by host”, for example, or, “Connection to Host was interrupted” A coffee cup might appear on your screen after attempting to type in a field or switching to another FileMaker layout. Attempting to click in the active FileMaker window eventually displays the windows “Not Responding” message along with windows Task Manager also indicating that the application is hung. In FileMaker server you may find something in the Event Viewer indicating that a file was closed. And in the FileMaker Server Admin, under hosted files, you may notice a file marked as “closed”.
FileMaker has built in functions to perform routine preventative file maintenance using the “compact” and “optimize” steps. These functions should be employed on a regular basis to prevent file problems, improve file performance and reduce file size.
The “Recovery” function is used to repair damaged files. This is usually sufficient to restore damaged files to working order. Following recovery, file maintenance should be performed.
Occasionally, in the worst cases, there are two other alternatives to resurrect files, cloning, and complete file reconstruction.
How to Tell When FileMaker Has Crashed
FileMaker Pro crashes present themselves in a few different ways. A dialog box saying “File Invoices.FP7 was forceably closed by host”, for example, or, “Connection to Host was interrupted” A coffee cup might appear on your screen after attempting to type in a field or switching to another FileMaker layout. Attempting to click in the active FileMaker window eventually displays the windows “Not Responding” message along with windows Task Manager also indicating that the application is hung. In FileMaker server you may find something in the Event Viewer indicating that a file was closed. And in the FileMaker Server Admin, under hosted files, you may notice a file marked as “closed”.
FileMaker has built in functions to perform routine preventative file maintenance using the “compact” and “optimize” steps. These functions should be employed on a regular basis to prevent file problems, improve file performance and reduce file size.
The “Recovery” function is used to repair damaged files. This is usually sufficient to restore damaged files to working order. Following recovery, file maintenance should be performed.
Occasionally, in the worst cases, there are two other alternatives to resurrect files, cloning, and complete file reconstruction.
When good files go bad, sometimes a quick taming is all that's needed to get operations up and running. Performing "file maintenance" or as I like to call it "Compactimize" sets the bits and bytes back to their place in the database. Although relatively straight forward, there are pitfalls to be wary of throughout even this process. And though I call it the "basic" recovery process, there's quite a bit going on to restore your FileMaker files to a working state. Compactimize is derived from the two main steps in FileMaker file recovery, referring to the actions you will need to perform; compact and optimize.
Follow the steps starting with 1-9 for basic file maintenance. More often than not, this will be sufficient for the time being. If you have the time I always suggest following up with the advanced recovery steps.