mis2000 said:

I was wondering about what tools are available to open and browse a Simply 2010 DB.

Any reporting tool or database client that can connect to data using ODBC.    SAP Crystal Reports, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Query, Microsoft Access, LibreOffice BASE.  'sysadmin' has full "third party" ODBC rights, other user IDs can be assigned Log in as sysadmin (if no password is set, you are logging in as sysadmin) and set the appropriate read-only or read-write rights.

mis2000 said:

And also to modify some data. For example some transactions from 2 years ago where not allocated to Projects and there is no way to lookup this entry and adjust any longer.

While this is possible, it's more complicated than you might expect.     The Project data is stored in multiple tables for a single transaction (invoice, invoice line items, G/L detail which can be further broken down into project detail, and there are summary balances for each project, for each account - it's not as simple as adding a project number ID in one place.  

What I did, was open datadict.pdf, save it as text, import that into Excel, and then tidy it up and made notes.   Once that's all sorted out, I could autofilter the descriptions to find references to 'Project'.   The table naming convention helps a bit, except there really isn't one consistent naming format - some project tables end with a P, some contain 'PRJ' in the table name, and some might be 'PJ'? or just have a 'P' in the table name, as do the accessible payroll tables. 

mis2000 said:

I search teh Mysql website and saw the Workbench and other Windows Tools but they are more recent than whatever Mysql version is intalled with Simply: is it safe to install these tools without overriding the existing Simply installation? 

You don't need any of those tools, Simply Accounting 2010 would have used the MySQL ODBC connector (3.51?), perhaps a customized build, and some version of MySQL database.  You can check the installed version in Control Panel if you're curious.  Installing other versions, and especially uninstalling the required one, will likely stop Simply Accounting from working at all.   Installing Workbench is not necessary if you just want to work with / on the data.

But I wouldn't do it at all, unless there was a huge payoff to make it worthwhile.   I doubt there will ever be a commercial tool for doing this either, since direct manipulation of historical data for a good reason would require the same methods as doing it for a bad (i.e. fraudulent) one.

I hope that helps, please post back.

First of, Thank you so much for taking the time to guide me in the right direction. Here are some of my comments following different things I tried:

I was wondering about what tools are available to open and browse a Simply 2010 DB.
Any reporting tool or database client that can connect to data using ODBC. SAP Crystal Reports, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Query, Microsoft Access, LibreOffice BASE. 'sysadmin' has full "third party" ODBC rights, other user IDs can be assigned read-only or read-write.
I tried Excel, Microsoft Query and I cannot connect. Does not recognize my User ID & password from Simply ???
ODBC DSN gives an error: setup routines for Mysql odbc 3.51 driver could not be found . Please reinstall driver

I have Simply 2010 Accountants version on Windows 7 with latest updates,

Isabel

Isabel

Check to see if your userid has security rights for Third-Party products set to Read-only or Read/Write. Randy was incorrect when he said that sysadmin is set automatically, it is not anymore, but I can't remember when that changed.

In the ODBC driver utility in the Control Panel you can tell if the driver is installed (Administrative Tools, Data Sources). If it is not installed (which is unlikely) you can install it yourself from the original CD /bin/MySQLODBC folder from a file called

mysql-connector-odbc-commercial-3.51.19-win32.msi

However, if you are running a 64-bit version of Excel, it might not work at all. Simply is a 32-bit program.

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the follow-up.

Yes sysadmin and my user (isabel) have all rights;
In the ODBC data source administrator, under User DSN i see Simply accounting 7 Co and name , Mysql Odbc driver 3.51 but when I click configure, I get an error: The Setup routines for the MySql ODBC 3.51 driver ODBC driver could not be found. Please reinstall driver. Second window opens: The specified driver contains an architecture mismatch between driver and application.

In excel l enter the user ID and password for Simply accounting and I get an error cannot read file.

I am running Simply 2010 on Win7 on this computer. and I tried with administrator user and starting application with Administrator user.

In the meantime I'll try reinstalling the ODBC driver.

Isabel

Sounds like you are on a 64-bit computer. You can modify the ODBC driver details if you open the 32-bit version from

c:\Windows\SysWow64\odbcad32.exe

You have not indicated if you are running the 64-bit version of Excel but I don't think you need to reinstall the MySQL drivers before you check that. I've never run a 64-bit version so I can't say for sure if it would or would not work but most 64-bit systems, like Outlook have problems communicating with programs like Simply and the other way as well.

Hi Richard,

Yes I am on Windows 7-64bit.
ODBC is 32Bit and Excel as well.
Same error in odbcad32.exe.

I am testing this on an XP machine. I'll post results later.

Isabel

Richard S. Ridings said:

Randy was incorrect when he said that sysadmin is set automatically, it is not anymore, but I can't remember when that changed.

Yes, that might have been before the 2010 release, and depends on when the company file was originally set up. 

The Sample Universal Construction file is set up with full rights for sysadmin.  If you can get one of the Excel sheets or Word documents in Reports | Microsoft(r) Office Documents to work, then it's set up.

Richard S. Ridings said:

However, if you are running a 64-bit version of Excel, it might not work at all. Simply is a 32-bit program.

It might work, with a 64 bit ODBC driver.   But Microsoft's recommendation is to stay with 32 bit Office.

If you're running a 64 bit operating system, you may have to search around a bit to find the 32 bit ODBC administration tool.   On Windows 7 it's C:\Windows\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe, Windows may open the 64 bit one by default.

But as I said at the end of the last post, it's a lot of work to manually create those entries, and update the summary tables.