Quickbooks Pro 2018 - Restore a Company File (Windows)

In our previous post, we converted a Mac company file to Windows and received a .qbb file.

If you haven’t already, transfer the converted file to a usb drive and drag the file to your desktop for easy access.

Launch Quickbooks Pro (Windows) and exit out of the ‘Let’s Set up your business!‘ screen since we’ll be restoring our company file!

Step 1- You’ll be presented with a ‘No Company Open‘ screen. Select Open or restore an existing company

Alternatively, you can head into the File menu > Open or Restore Company

You’ll be presented with a ‘Open or Restore Company’ screen and several choices are made available to the user.

Step 2- For our specific scenario, choose Restore a backup copy > Next > Local backup > Next

You’ll be presented with an ‘Open Backup Copy‘ screen

Navigate to the Desktop or the location where you stored your backup file (.qbb) and choose Open

Step 3- Where do you want to restore the file?

Choose a location (where backups will be kept) and a new name (to avoid overwriting the original file) for the restored file.

Note: Your new company file will be converted to .qbw

Step 4- You’ll be presented with the Quickbooks Desktop Login screen where you’ll be asked to input the password you created on our last guide.

Click Ok to finish and wait for a few minutes. The amount of wait time depends on the size of your data!

Step 5- You’ll be presented with a Update Your Quickbooks Desktop Company File screen. Your company file will be updated to the newest version and won’t be backwards-compatible (meaning it won’t open on an older version of the program). Select Update Now and the progress bar will be shown on the screen.

If you are met with the error Quickbooks – Unrecoverable Error Code: 3119700540 read on…

Quickbooks Desktop Pro will terminate. Relaunch the application and select Open Sample Company File and confirm updating the file. Once the company file is updated, repeat steps 1-5 and this time the update should complete without any errors.

Note: This is what worked for me.

Once the company file is successfully updated, you’ll be greeted with a Sign into your Intuit account screen. Input your credentials, verify (if you have that set up) and you are ready to go!