Welcome to the Community space, @Waterturf. Thank you for your efforts in attempting to restore a backup file on various devices in hopes of getting different results. To successfully reinstate your data into your QuickBooks account, I'd like to share some solutions and reminders.
Firstly, ensure that the QuickBooks file extension uses the backup company file (.qbb) when restoring. After that, check if the file has more than 6MB (6,000KB). If it's lesser, it's possible that it's not real. Therefore, you'll need to create a new one from the working file and review the size by right-clicking it and selecting Properties.
Additionally, you can only restore the backup to a newer version of QuickBooks Desktop. For example, if the backup was created in QuickBooks 2019, you cannot restore it in QuickBooks 2018.
Next, review the following:
- No special characters ( / < > ! $) on the company file name.
- Restore a backup over an existing company file.
- If the backup was restored from a USB flash drive to a network drive, you'll need to move it to the local drive first.
- The company file is compromised.
Here's an article that will walk you through the complete steps of the solutions provided: Get help with Error: Failed or Error: Restore Failed.
If you receive prompts regarding resetting an admin password and missing payroll data, check out this reference to learn what you can do: Fix backup company file issues in QuickBooks Desktop.
With this information, we should be able to narrow down the reasons why you cannot restore a backup. If you have follow-up questions about this matter, add them below. I'll be here to answer them for you.
