RTG Bills saves an image of every bill it prints. The images are saved in a separate file for each Bill Date.

If the computer crashes while you are printing a bill, the image file can be damaged. The result may be error messages when you try to print historical bills for that Bill Date.

Note that this is an unusual problem. More often, when people cannot print a historical bill, it is because they did not specify the correct Bill Date. Click the Index button to see a list of the possible Bill Dates.

If a file containing historical bills is damaged, we have a program that may be able to fix it.

The program offered here is only designed to work with RTG Bills Version 2.27 and above. If you have a lower-numbered version, go here.

1. Right-click the RTG Bills icon and choose Run as administrator. From the RTG Bills menu, choose:

   File > Update > Yes > Check The Internet For Updates

2. Click the Check The Internet For Updates button. If a messages says, "All available updates have been applied," click OK.
   
   
3. Ignore the list of updates. Click the Special button.
   
   
4. You should see the Special Updates window. Find Fix Historical Bills and click that item. A checkmark should appear next to it.
   
   
5. Click Install to install this update.
   
   
6. If the update is successful, the program will tell you that one update was applied. Click OK, Close, and Close again.
   
   
7. Start RTG Bills again. Choose File > Tools from the menu. You should see Fix Historical Bills in the list of tools. Select it and click OK.
   
   
8. The program should appear, with the title Fix Historical Bills. Select the Bill Date of the bills that need to be fixed.
   
   
9. Click the Fix button. The program will attempt to fix the historical bills file for the selected date. A message will tell you whether any problems were found.
   
   
10. Click Close to leave the program.

The program creates a log file as it works. The log file records any problems that were found in the historical bills file. The log file is in the Oldbills folder, inside the RTG Bills data folder, which is where the historical bills are stored.

The historical bills are stored in a separate file for every Bill Date. The file name is the date, in the format YYYYMMDD, with the extension .bil. For example, the file for July 31, 2005 is named 20050731.bil. The corresponding log file is 20050731.bil.log.

If you have any problems with the program, send the log file to RTG as an email attachment.

Questions about this procedure should be directed to RTG Support.