No longer able to share file using QB Server for MAC

Thanks for taking the time reaching out to the Community, @RealPickles.

I can see that you've reached out to our Technical Team already. Issues like this need to be reviewed and validated to determine its root cause. 

While the Community is a public space, I recommend contacting our Technical Team again to get this matter sorted out. They have the tools to further investigate this behavior and provide a resolution.

The sharing of ideas and solutions is always open here which helps to make the Community such an awesome place. Other users who've experienced the same concern may present solutions and recommendations through this forum. 

If you ever have questions or need anything, I'm just a few clicks away. Have a god one!

Sounds like you are on QuickBooks Mac for Desktop 2019 and have updated to R7.1.  That should be working for Multiuser sharing.  

Lets see if it has something to do with your file or something to do with the network environment. Can you share the Sample Product File from the QuickBooks server?  If you can and that works ok it may be a problem with the file (as was suggested by support).  But if you can't then its something else.

Try opening your file in QuickBooks client on the server machine (but don't use the server).  Does that work ok?  If it does, run File->Utilities->Verify.  Are any issues reported? If they are try running File->Utility->Rebuild to fix them.  Try Verify again to see if it now is clean.  If it isn't let us know here. 

One more initial question: is the company file on a shared directory like DropBox or an iCloud shared directory?

Thanks for the response. 

Where would I find the sample company file?  That sounds like a good test to run.

The file can be opened and run on all our computers in single user mode.  There is an un-repairable inventory error that shows up when verifying the file.

The file is not shared on a cloud based server. 

I appreciate you getting back to us, @RealPickles.

You can find the sample product file in the No Company Open window. And I'd be glad to walk you through the steps on how to get there.

1. Open your QuickBooks Desktop for Mac.
2. Go to the File menu.
3. Select Close Company.
4. Once it's closed, the No Company Open window will prompt.
5. From there, select Sample Product.
6. Click Open.

Once done, you can now use the sample file for a test run.

On the other hand, since you received an error when verifying the file, you can proceed with rebuilding the data to fix it. Here's how:

1. Go to the File menu.
2. Select Utilities.
3. Choose Rebuild Data.
4. In the QuickBooks Information window, select OK.
5. Select OK when you see Rebuild has completed.

I've got you an article for more details: Resolve Data Damage on your Company File.

You might also want to read this article for more guidance about QuickBooks Desktop for Mac: QuickBooks Desktop for Mac 2019 User’s Guide.

Just hit the Reply button if you have additional questions. I'll be right here to help.

What is the exact text reported for the inventory error?  Maybe the fastest way to work on this will be for your to send me an email at qbmacforum1 (at) intuit.com, where (at) is the at sign.  Include a link to this forum post in the email.  I'll reply and we'll figure out what's up.

Thanks!

Thank you.  It appears that so far we can run the Sample file without issue on the server, I will continue to make some transactions on that file to see if it looses connection.

Another issue that came up when speaking with QB tech support was that the permissions on my file are being reset to read only for everyone when the QBserver shares the file.  This happens both with our file as well as the sample QB file.  Is this supposed to happen?  Tech support suggested this was not supposed to happen and that we should resolve this with MAC tech support of some kind.  Thank you.

Thanks for adding more details about the issue, @RealPickles.

You should be able to perform any processes on the original file including the sample ones. To determine what's causing this unexpected behavior, we'll have to access the data file and the connection of the server.

I suggest contacting your IT professional to help configure the permissions to Read and Write for Everyone.

For future reference, check out the Troubleshoot multi-user issues for QuickBooks Desktop for Mac article. It provides an overview on how to configure the network and firewall settings.

I want to make sure this is taken care of for you. If you have any other concerns, post a comment below. I’ll pop right back in to assist further. Have a good one.

QuickBooks doesn't have any calls to set the permissions on a file to read only except when making a backup file (which is placed inside a read only disk image). 

If something is setting your QuickBooks files to read only that is happening outside of QuickBooks. 

You can select your company file in the Finder, choose File->Get Info, and adjust the permissions at the bottom. 

Thank you.  It seems like we might have an OS related issue here.  The sample file has also started having difficulty being shared after working OK for a few hours.  I will pursue this and let you know if it resolves the issue.

If you hold down the option key in QuickBooks Server and select File->Collect Logs it will gather up the logs from the server into a zip file on the desktop.  There's no sensitive financial info in these logs (you can uncompress them and examine them by double clicking on the zip and then opening the files in a text editor).

Those logs are the most useful thing for an engineer to diagnose the problem.

we have had the same issues with the file on the server. I have been on line and on phone support for days now. the one day I was online and phone for over 8 hrs straight. they were unable to fix the issue. I think there is a major glitch in this new up date for Mac 2021and they have no idea how to fix it. so I will be following myself to see if there's a solution.

I disagree your company has not been able to fix my program for over a week now . I have lost business due to this not working . taking days to talk to your people and have them even access my computer still have not gotten my company back to running. I have one computer for the whole office to work off of !