Error Reading Archive File (s)

[Awieler_pianist]

Hello,

I was working on a file that I saved off recently and when I opened up the next day, I received an error message that said "error reading archive file (s)." I tried over and over to open the file, but the message just kept popping up. The file is still in my computer's file storage system, but I am unable to open it. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

[motet]

Can you post a screen shot of the error message? I've never heard of Finale referring to something as an "archive file." And perhaps you can attach the offending file here and others can try opening it.

[zuill]

If you right click on the file in its folder, you might be able to see it's state. I don't archive files, but maybe that happened, and that can be undone.

Zuill

[Awieler_pianist]

Screenshot of Error Message

[Awieler_pianist]

Here is the file that is acting up.

Thank you so much!

[zuill]

I get the same error message. I've never seen this before. Hopefully you have a backup or autosave file.

Zuill

[motet]

I get something slightly different, then as I click OK, another, and another (see below). This looks like the infamous temp file bug to me, wherein Finale stores files in the system temp directory but fails to keep them open, and the OS comes along and deletes them. Are you, by chance, in the habit of leaving Finale open for long periods of time?

You're probably out of luck with this one, but you can prevent it in the future by making your own directory for Finale temporary files and pointing to it in Preferences/Folders/Temporary Files. You'll have to clean it out manually once in a while, as Finale also doesn't always clean up after itself (especially, it seems, when editing linked parts).

This problem has been around for years, though a competent programmer should be able to fix it in an afternoon.
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[ebiggs1]

This looks like the infamous temp file bug to me, wherein Finale stores files in the system temp directory but fails to keep them open, ...

I doubt it is the onary temp file problem since none of the rest of us can open it either. We never had the temp file in the first place.
I don't know what the problem is, however.

If you look at it in a text editor it doesn't look like a normal Finale file. I suspect it is lost for good.

[ebiggs1]

You can try sending it to MM tech support,.... but good luck with that.

[motet]

The reason I suspected the temp file bug is that one of the error messages I get refers to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp, the default place Finale puts temp files, but I've got my Finale set to point elsewhere. Perhaps the file got saved in some intermediate state? In any case, you're probably out of luck, alas.

[ebiggs1]

Is this what you want?

You need to change the bass oboe in the Score Manager to cello.

[motet]

Wrong thread.

[Awieler_pianist]

I believe the issue has been solved. The file became accessible when I changed 'filename' of the .bakx file to 'filename.musx' instead. Then I was able to open the file and save as a .musx file format. Thank you for your help.

[ebiggs1]

Whoops!

[motet]

Perhaps the .bakx was the previous version, since you posted a .musx file here. The backup file feature is good to have on, as you've discovered. I stand by my temp file guess, so you might want to follow the advice above.

[ebiggs1]

I stand by my temp file guess, so you might want to follow the advice above.

OK if that is true, and I don't know, why does it affect ones of us that never had the temp file. Does Finale record that in the file somewhere that the temp file was deleted at some point? I suspect not. I think Finale creates a new temp file at the current computers specified folder.

It is ridiculous that MM doesn't or hasn't fixed this long standing issue.

[Awieler_pianist]

I will definitely take your advice about the temporary file location. Thank you very much for your help!

[zuill]

I stand by my temp file guess, so you might want to follow the advice above.

OK if that is true, and I don't know, why does it affect ones of us that never had the temp file. Does Finale record that in the file somewhere that the temp file was deleted at some point? I suspect not. I think Finale creates a new temp file at the current computers specified folder.

It is ridiculous that MM doesn't or hasn't fixed this long standing issue.

Possibly we're talking about 2 different things. Temp files (.tmp) are used while a program is open to store various pieces of information about files that are open. When Finale is closed, those .tmp files should be cleared out of the folder where they are temporarily stored. They are of no use after the program is closed. If they are in a folder where other .tmp files are stored, I think Finale gets confused and either can't find the ones it is looking for, or maybe thinks .tmp files from other programs are Finale .tmp files. Motet knows more about this than I do. I have a .tmp folder for each version of Finale, and I delete these (only when Finale is not open) every day. Since they are useless after closing Finale, I permanently delete them.

For the file that was posted here, as I think Motet implied, the backup file was saved before corruption, but the musx file posted here somehow got corrupted by Finale mishandling the .tmp files.

Zuill

[motet]

There do seem to be two separate issues. One is that Finale creates temporary files it needs, but neglects to keep them open or otherwise lock them. If they're in the default place of %localappdata%\temp on Windows (which translates to something like C:\Users\Username\AppDate\Local\temp), the system periodically runs a clean-up task on that folder and doesn't know the Finale files are still in use and so deletes them. When the user goes to save the Finale file, Finale looks for that temp file and, not finding it, can't gracefully recover for whatever reason. I believe the Mac version has a similar issue, though the temp file directory is different (/tmp?).

The other bug is kind of the opposite; when Finale is done with some temp files, rather than deleted them it sometimes leaves them around for the OS to clean up after. So if you make your own temp directory to avoid the first problem, you must contend with the second by cleaning them up yourself manually. If you work on linked parts, it seems to make more of these than just working on the score.

Both of these bugs could be fixed by a competent programmer--there's nothing mysterious about them and the tools exist to do it. If a tile is open by a process, the OS won't delete it, so for the first bug it should keep the files open. For the second problem, there's a way to create a temporary file such that when the process terminates, the file is automatically deleted.

I could be wrong about Awieler_pianist's problem being due to this. I base it solely on the error messages I see when I open the file. The fact that it says it cant create a file in %localappdata%\temp--I changed Finale's preferences to point somewhere else, so why is it trying to reference that directory? I may well be wrong, and understand ebigg's points, but am not interested in debating it further.

Awieler_pianist, in this case, do your remember if in fact you had Finale running for a long period (e.g. overnight) just before this occurred?

[Awieler_pianist]

No. I had been in the habit of closing my apps every night (including finale), and I always made sure the files successfully saved.