Find QBWin.log or QuickBooks.log files

Learn to find QBWin.log or QuickBooks.log files to help you determine the cause of certain errors in your QuickBooks Desktop company file.

QuickBooks Desktop logs program messages and errors, including information created by Verify, Rebuild, and Condense Data utilities, in a specific file. In Windows, the file is called QBWin.log while for Mac, it is called QuickBooks.log.

QuickBooks for Windows

Each QuickBooks version has its own QBWin.log. Every time you start QuickBooks, it renames the old QBWin.log file and creates a new one.

• If you only have one version of QuickBooks Desktop installed, follow Option 1.
• If you can't find the folder/s in the path advised in this article, you might need to display hidden files and folders.

Access QBWin.log on a local computer

Option 1: Access QBWin.log from QuickBooks Product Information screen

1. On the Home page, press F2 or Ctrl+1 to open the Product Information window.
2. Press F3 or Ctrl+2 to open the Tech Help window, then select the Open File tab.
3. Select QBWin.log, then select Open File.
   Quick tip: Press Ctrl+F, then enter “Begin Verify” to find the last entry of Begin Verify on your log file.

Option 2: Access the QBWin.log in Windows

Go to the location of QBWin.log using File explorer.

Location: C:\Users\YOUR USER NAME\AppData\Local\Intuit\QuickBooks\log\XX.X\QBWin.log

In this path, XX.X represents your version of QuickBooks Desktop. For example, 18.0 is Enterprise 18.0 and 28.0 is QuickBooks 2018.

Tip: A faster way of doing this is by typing %localappdata%\Intuit\QuickBooks\log\XX.X\QBWin.log to your address bar.

Access QBWin.log on Rights Networks or other Hosted Environment

For QuickBooks Desktop Pro/Premier users:

1. From the Start menu of your Hosted or Terminal environment, select Computer.
2. On the search menu, type QBWin.log. Do not press Enter or click the magnifying glass icon.
3. A list of QBWin.logs will populate. Look for the QBWin.log that has the latest timestamp.

For QuickBooks Enterprise Solution users:

1. On the QuickBooks Home page, press F2 or Ctrl+1 to open the Product Information window.
2. Press F3 or Ctrl+2 to open the Tech Help window.
3. Select Open File tab.
4. Select QBWin.log, then Open File.

QuickBooks for Mac

1. Select File, and then Close Company.
2. Hold command+1 on your keyboard to see Product Information.
3. Select Logging and then Collect All Logs.
4. Find the zip file on your desktop and double-click it to extract the files. Inside the folder you'll find the log files.