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Topic: Import Wizard fails to go beyond "checklist to use for search" stage

I am running a stand-alone (desk-top) version of Recorder 6.16.2.241 and to date over the last couple of years have successfully imported hundreds (probably thousands) of records via Excel xls files without any obvious problems. I was successfully importing records of a single species this way today and everything was going well with my third import file until…..! I found that I could not get beyond the “checklist to use for search” area. I could search the checklist of my choosing and get the correct species name ok but then Recorder stops working and I get the following Error message in the RecorderApp.exe window that says an unhandled error has occurred in the application etc, etc.  I’ve gone out of Recorder, started again using a different checklist but exactly the same thing happens. NB I was always importing records of exactly the same species.

Thinking this might be a well-known bug I thought I’d better back up my data and upload a later version of Recorder 6. However, when trying to use “Tools - Database tools - Backup data” I then found that this was also not working either – the same error message.
 
Any suggestions about how to fix this so that I can get back to importing some fairly standard spreadsheet records, using the standard spreadsheet template I normally use? Will uploading to a later version of Recorder sort it out?

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Re: Import Wizard fails to go beyond "checklist to use for search" stage

Have you tried doing a backup using SQL Server Management Studio? Provided you installed these tools when you installed SQL Server it should be available via Start – All Programs – Microsoft SQL Server 2005/8. What version of Windows and SQL Server are you using? I don’t know if upgrading will resolve the problem but it is the first thing to try. V6.19 is the latest version on general release - http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/page-4612

Sally Rankin, JNCC Recorder Approved Expert
E-mail: s.rankin@btinternet.com
Telephone: 01491 578633
Mobile: 07941 207687

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Re: Import Wizard fails to go beyond "checklist to use for search" stage

Thanks for the advice, no I didn't. I'm using Microsoft SQL Server 2005/8 and Windows 7 but will try that.

However, I have just managed to get Recorder to import records again from the same problem Excel spread-sheet. There were only about 100 records on it but I decided to try (somewhat laboriously) importing small sections of it (7 rows at a time). I assumed that either it wouldn't work at all, or that if the problem was somewhere in the data that I just couldn't see then I would be able to spot the issue at some point in the procedure and correct it.

Amazingly I managed to import all the 100-odd records this way without the slightest blip. I had previously tried at least half a dozen times (including switching the computer off and on again) to import records from the whole list, meeting the same error problem each time, so I'm possibly still non-the-wiser. The only other thing that was different is that having stopped using Recorder for several days, during this period Windows did one of its regular automatic updates. So I wonder if it was actually that operation that resolved the problem? At present the import procedure has started working again. Thanks anyway.