Though we try to make CMD as error-free as possible, it's possible you will occasionally experience problems with CMD. When this happens, it's important to make sure that you do not make your problem worse!

Don't guess if you are not sure how to remedy a problem! And please do not make any additional changes to your data until the issue is resolved! Please contact us immediately for help!

If you get an error while using CMD, please note what the error message says, and note what you were doing at the time the error was raised. We can fix any problem we can duplicate, so knowing just what happened and in what sequence is crucial for our helping to deal with it.

Sometimes the only way that we can diagnose a problem is to actually look at your data. We can do this in one of two ways. Either you can backup your data and e-mail it to us, or you can use our LogMeIn.Com account if your computer has direct access to broadband (cable modem, DSL, etc. Dial-up will not work with LogMeIn). LogMeIn is a free service on the internet that allows us to actually sign on to your computer and watch while you run the program. It also allows us to actually run your computer from where we are.

Using LogMeIn is often the very best way to resolve an issue because it's all done right there on your computer. When we are finished with the LogMeIn session, you can remove your computer from our LogMeIn account so that it's no longer accessible.

In either case, we pledge absolute confidentiality with your data. We make no use of it whatsoever except as needed to resolve any error issues that you experience.

Why Do Errors Happen in CMD?

Couple of reasons. First, we're human, second, you are human, and third, computers are very unforgiving!

We do our best to produce a program free of bugs that can cause errors. Occasionally some slip through, as our use of the program is not the same as yours! We do our best in our testing to make sure everything works, but our humanity shows through from time to time. We pledge to keep current versions of CMD working and fixed as problems are reported.

We've also discovered that sometimes our users attempt to use CMD in ways for which it was not designed, occasionally resulting in problems that we didn't anticipate. Sometimes users attempt actions with the program without first reading. For example, in prior versions, if you were attempting to bring in data from a prior version into an updated version, many users attempted to simply backup their data from the old program and restore it into the new program. While that seems logical, it's not! We change things about CMD's data files every year to add new features or to improve current ones. When the data files change, that makes your older version data incompatible. That's why we provide import routines when we make changes. But since some users do not read the startup notes, they miss the instructions that say not to try to restore older data - in invariably causes errors.

In each edition of CMD, we trap for errors that become known through CMD's use. For example, in CMD 2008, we altered the Restore Data code so that it will not allow anything other than a CMD 2008 format data base to be restored, thus eliminating the kind of problems described in the prior paragraph.

This is mentioned to encourage you to contact us when you experience problems so that we can trap for the issue you raise in an update.