I'll briefly chime in here to suggest that network issues and potential 
simultaneous access are more likely culprits for your data corruption and loss. 

A search for compatibility issues between GnuCash versions 3.6 and 4.11 did not 
yield any specific changes that would result in the loss of swathes of 
transactions from one version to the other, although access to the same file 
from different major versions isn't really a great idea regardless. 

In all my years of using GnuCash (18 and counting), I haven't heard of any 
documented examples of transaction loss that didn't ultimately have some other 
explanation (hardware failure, user error, unsupported uses, etc.). 

The only remotely-related problem I've personally encountered over the years 
was that at one time (around version 3.1 or so), one of my saved reports kept 
causing the saved reports file to truncate arbitrarily, leaving me without many 
saved reports. I ended up creating my saved reports from scratch, which 
eliminated the problem. But again, that wasn't accounting data; it was the 
supporting reports file. 

David T. 



On Feb 5, 2023, 2:44 AM, at 2:44 AM, Daine Pearson via gnucash-user 
<gnucash-user@gnucash.org> wrote:
>Sadly, no.. those help docs are pretty basic - I have looked at most of
>
>what can be found in the various docs and generally searching.
>I'll probably need to go to the code repository and look for comments
>or 
>something along those lines.
>
>Still would be good to at least confirm that our actions of accessing 
>the data file with two app versions was the issue.
>It was a pretty devastating number of transactions.
>
>Thanks!
>
>On 2/3/2023 9:11 PM, David H wrote:
>>
>https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#Q:_What_are_all_these_.gnucash_and_.log_files_filling_up_my_directory.3F
>> https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-guide/basics-backup1.html
>>
>> Might give you an explanation of the log files...
>>
>> Cheers David H.
>>
>> On Sat, 4 Feb 2023 at 10:01, Daine Pearson via gnucash-user 
>> <gnucash-user@gnucash.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>     Hi all,
>>
>>     I do see a few messages spread over the years about similar
>issues
>>     but
>>     most have gone unanswered so I thought I'd create a new one.
>>
>>     My partner and I have been jointly using GNUcash for a few years.
>The
>>     XML data files reside on a shared network drive.
>>     I recently installed a new Win 10 computer and installed the
>>     latest (at
>>     the time) 4.11.
>>     I did not think about the fact that her system was still running
>>     3.6 -
>>     Probably the culprit...
>>     Everything seems to have been going fine but yesterday she
>noticed
>>     all
>>     the payments into a credit card account were gone, leaving quite
>a
>>     large
>>     negative balance. I looked further and discovered this was true
>>     for many
>>     accounts but I do not believe any accounts were missing or
>>     completely empty.
>>     I went into the shared directory and could easily see by the file
>>     size
>>     that a large data reduction recently occurred as the size
>suddenly
>>     drops
>>     from ~900KB to ~600KB.
>>     There is also a 17MB (136325 lines) log file in that same time
>period.
>>     Not so much had happened in the few days after that file size
>drop
>>     so I
>>     exported some new transactions that had been manually entered in
>the
>>     (corrupted) file and saved one of the earlier files as the new
>>     data file.
>>     I updated both machines to the latest stable 4.13 build, imported
>>     those
>>     new transactions and just for kicks, ran the repair function
>which
>>     did
>>     not throw any messages so presumably nothing was fixed.
>>     Things seem to be fine but it occurred to me that it would be
>>     useful if
>>     I understood better what the log files actually might reveal and
>>     if they
>>     also show actions taken by the program?
>>     It seems pretty clear that each new transaction generates a log
>entry
>>     but I'm unsure how deletions, moved items, etc., are marked in
>the
>>     logs.
>>     I'm guessing the letters in the 'mod' column between Start & End
>mean
>>     something but not sure what.
>>
>>     I presume and hope that something about managing and saving the
>same
>>     data file under both versions is what caused the mishap but it
>>     would be
>>     good to understand the situation better so all thoughts welcome.
>>
>>     And presuming sharing files between different program version is
>a
>>     danger (which it likely is), I guess it would be helpful if
>>     opening an
>>     account file would trigger a cancel message if it was last saved
>by a
>>     different version, particularly a newer version.
>>
>>     Thanks... DP
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