Magnific

Calling tech support can be similar to going to a doctor: sometimes you thought you had a problem, only to find you have another one or three.

In this case, a user called for help because a database they had supposedly been using for years had suddenly stopped working.

They insisted they hadn’t changed anything, and they had already restarted the computer, so what could it be?

When the technician arrived and checked the database, everything seemed to be working normally, until the user remembered there was actually a different way they normally opened it, one they had apparently discovered years earlier.

Read the full story below.

The user error was longer ago than initially thought.

A friend’s story not mine – so lacking in some detail as I wasn’t there. Telling now as it was 20+ years ago and my friend is no longer with us.

The usual call we’ve all had – “The Database I’ve been using for years isn’t working”.

Obviously they hadn’t done anything so the fault was not with them. And even more obviously they had rebooted…

So my friend looked at the database and it worked fine as he expected (there would have been more than one person screaming otherwise).

User wasn’t using his phone so, as it was close, my friend wandered over.

And it’s a good thing that he did.

Database opened on the user’s machine.

And yes, the user vaguely remembered the long way in but they never bothered with that as they’d found a quicker way that they wanted restored.

When examining the data in Access, the ID10T had managed to create a local backup of the database – which hadn’t been updated for about 2 years!

His job was compiling reports which guided future planning and all his reports for years were based on hopelessly out of date information.

As for opening the out of date database copy – his computer just needed a reboot…

That’s crazy! What did Reddit have to say?

A reader shares their thoughts.

Yikes.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a company that didn’t expect their work-from-home policy to result in better time off benefits for their employees.

Someone shares their experience.

So the database they thought they had been working with was actually a local backup that hadn’t been updated in two years.

The funniest part is that the original problem really did have a simple solution: the user just needed to restart the computer.

But that was the least important discovery of the entire visit.