Thankyou for the response. Here are the specifics you mention.
AccountRight 2020.3 SE
I have gone throughh the 3000 items and manually removed the new lines. Interestingly, if I put a new line back into the description it again misbehaves, so the AR2020.3 does not intercept and prevent the entry of stuff which stops the export/import from working properly.
The file is local. I have only 1 user session operating. There is no continuous backup running. There is no drop box in place. I can see no way in which a file sharing problem can legitimately occur.
I can live with all the spurious warning messages and the inability to use new lines (even though it is a nuisance). What I can't live with is the random failure to complete the import, and the random failure to import some items (showing the dreaded error 0: sharing violation).
Here is a typical list of errors and warings. (From a rare run to completion). I have looked at every record flagged as a warning and they look OK to me. Basically the messages are unhelpful, and indicate to me that AR2020.3 has not been tested to any extent with export/import.
-4077 You have sales for this item. Really, we would be out of business if we did not.
0 File sharing violation. Really, only one person is using it.
45, 49 Names too long. Truncated. Really, they were exported by ar2020.3
71 Item Not Sold. What on earth does that mean.
75 Items per selling unit... Really, the program gives no access to ability to change items per selling unit.
2306 records imported without errors.
924 records imported with warnings.
15 records skipped.
Summary of errors
Error -4077: You have sales for this item.
Error 0: Unexpected import error - There is a file sharing violation. A different process might be using the file. [ C:\Users\Public\Documents\MYOB\My AccountRight Files\bcp195-2020-2.myox ]
Warning 45: Supplier name too long; name truncated
Warning 49: Unit of measure too long; unit truncated.
Warning 71: Item is not sold; some information ignored.
Warning 75: #Items per selling unit may only be specified for items that are sold and inventoried
I do appreciate your input.
I must confess I would really really appreciate some real input from MYOB (who have profitted mightily from us for the last 30 years) and fix the bugs in the program. What I see is a company that doesn't give a stuff about its existing customers. It is so busy putting fancy extras into the software, it has completely forgotten that it needs to make the basic stuff work properly. ( We have just discovered after 2 months of working with the API mob that if you install 2020.2 on a clean W10 machine then the API calls won't work. You have to remove the 2020.2, instal 2020.1 , which uses an earlier version of SqlSever, and then reinstall 2020.2 and voila, then it works. Obvioulsy no one has ever tested this. It obviously is still using some calls to the earlier SQLServer)
Like most modern companies, they have walled themselves off so that it is impossible to get some one who actually knows something involved.
Ever since we were forced to move from Premier to AcountRight2019 we have had nothing but trouble. ODBC calls vanished so all that had to be re written, but then the API calls did not work so months of investigation for that. Version 2020.2 blew up our netwroks because it was unable to run on a W7 machine, but no body told us that. Our automated price update system depends on impoirt export and wehave not been able to get that work properly yet.
As I said, I am VERY VERY VERY dissatisfied.
