Unrecoverable Error during Repairing Attachment Links QB Desktop 2018 R11

Greetings, @Memotronics.

I appreciate you taking the time posting in the Community. Allow me to help share a few troubleshooting steps to get past the Unrecoverable Error.

You're right. It's possible that your QuickBooks company file is damaged, there is an attached file with names that contain special characters, or QuickBooks installation files are damaged when you encounter an Unrecoverable Error. 

To check, we can run the Rebuild and Verify Data Utility to find the error in the results screen and resolve minor data problems. Before doing so, let's make sure that QuickBooks Desktop is up to date and create a backup of the company file. 

Next, let's check the Attached folder to ensure there are no file names containing special characters. Let me show you how:

1. On the keyboard, press Windows to open the Search window.
2. Enter Attach in the search field then press Enter.
3. Open the attached folder.
4. Right-click on the first folder (usually the inbox).
5. Select Send to then choose Compressed (zipped) folder.
6. If an error is encountered while zipping the file, read the error message directed at the file that has a special character in it, including the special character that it is referring to.
7. Right-click the folder and select Rename. By renaming the file, you can remove the special character.
8. Repeat step 5 until there are no errors found in any of the folders in the Attached folder.
9. Go back to QuickBooks, and run Repair Attached Document Links again.

After that, you can delete the zip files generated in the attached folder.

If you get the same result, I recommend checking the following article for additional solutions: Fix QuickBooks Desktop.

That should get you back on track. Keep me posted how things go once you've tried the steps above or if you have any other questions while working with QuickBooks. I'll be glad to help you further. Have a wonderful day ahead. 

That did not work.

Even if I delete the folders under the company-folder under attach, it fails.

In other words: I go to the attach folder, then the company sub-folder, and I see a bunch of folders (one for each "item" that has attachments).  I delete all of those folders, and when I try to rebuild links, it fails with Unrecoverable.

When I try to CLEAN links, it still claims to find 1 orphaned item that it supposedly moves to the inbox, but there's nothing in the inbox.

I tried the database verify and rebuild, it didn't change anything.

How does QB determine that there is an "Orphaned" item?  Obviously not by looking at the physical folders, because there aren't any, I removed all the folders.   Also not at DocCenter, because that shows no files.  Where is it getting this "1 orphaned item" from?  I believe there's some logical corruption in my database that the file doctor can't detect.

Didn't work.  I did a verify (found nothing) and a rebuild.

- I deleted EVERYTHING from the Txn and Inbox folder, they are COMPLETELY EMPTY

- Did a Rebuild, 0 issues found

- Did a Verify, no issues found

- DocCenter shows NO FILES

- Clean Up Attachment Links says "1 attachment found and moved to inbox" but nothing there

- Repair Links says "It looks like some documents are still missing...."

- When I click "YES" it crashes.

Obviously there's a logical data corruption:  First, there's the "orphan" that doesn't exist.  Then it says that there are documents missing ("fewer than in doc-center").  DocCenter shows 0 files, how can there be fewer than 0 files???

If you have a diagnostic tool I can run on my datafile, please let me know.  File Doctor doesn't seem to do the trick.

We appreciate you doing the troubleshooting steps, Memotronics.

It could be QuickBooks was able to find an item with deleted components like accounts. Thus, the orphan item. 

My colleague already provided the necessary steps to resolve this. However, we wont stop there, and I want to make sure you get more support to resolve this. I'd suggest reaching out to our phone agents to check this further. Here's how:

1. Click Help inside QuickBooks, then go to QuickBooks Desktop Help.
2. Choose Contact Us.
3. Enter a brief description of your issue, then click Continue.
4. Choose either Message an Agent or Talk to Specialist.

Of course, you can visit the Community if you have other concerns.