Archive for September 8, 2011

QBOE how to backup to local drive.

QBOE how to backup to local drive.

Also known as QuickBooks Online Edition, QuickBooks Cloud Edition, backup fails, backup hangs 97% 99%

Today a customer tried to back up a 170MB from QuickBooks Online Edition by using Save Copy or Backup and selecting their local drive.

The backup didn’t complete after an hour – a temp file appeared and grew suddenly from about 2MB to 138MB or thereabouts, but then grew at a rate of about 20kb per minute.

An online chat with QB support staff yielded an effective but non-obvious solution, and also advised that the info at https://qboe.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1774/kw/backup/r_id/103898 only applies to US customers.

Here’s the solution that worked for us

1 – Perform a “Local backup” to the Q:\ drive.
2 – When the backup finishes, choose “Restore” in Quickbooks Online Edition, but DON’T follow all the way through
3 – Click ONCE on the file you want to have on your own computer, and while it’s highlighted hold down Ctrl and press C. (This copies the file to your clipboard, but nothing will happen on screen.)
4 – Minimise the QuickBooks Online Edition
5 – Find a place to copy your backup to, right click therein and choose Paste.

The file should copy from their server to yours at a rate of about 2.5Mbps if your line can go that fast. (8 minutes for the 170MB file)

Hope this helps someone out there! The QuickBooks online support pages are not date stamped and there’s plenty of old and possibly out of date info there.