Quickbooks help

I've never used Quickbooks before, but my mom does for her business. I'm the go-to tech support for my family, but I have no idea what to do in this case. This is what she needs:

Would like you to recover my 2007,2008, 2009 and 2010 info on Quick books. It automatically saves when I enter data, but I've concluded that when I "restore" I've lost the data. I haven't lost it all, but can't figure out how to get to 2007 and 2008.

So sometime soon, could you come over and take my disk, Quick book prgram and copy my desktop icons and recover my data?

Can anyone tell me how to help her?

Hi kairi2

I'm a user of QuickBooks Pro 2009, and previously used QuickBooks Premiere 2006 which has loads more options (most of which I never used)

Being a "user" does not make me a "pro".
For unfamiliar functions and difficult questions, I have found QuickBooks searchable Help, QuickBooks Community, and Learning Center Tutorials to be useful.
Sometimes I ask the wrong question, or use the wrong reference term, because I'm not an accountant, not a book keeper, and really not much of a business person.
But persistence usually pays off.
And like it or not, I am the "go-to" guy for a small company, probably in much the same way that your Mother is calling upon you.
_________________________

Here's a couple of things you should take into consideration. (disclaimer: This is coming from a guy who has made plenty of mistakes, but no fatal mistakes….yet.)

1. When a business record is first set up, QuickBooks "creates a Business", it may be named: Mother's Business Name 2007, or something similar.
— When a business is created, it opens a Book in which to store the company.
— The file name is something like Dougs Company.07.QBW or Mother's Business Name 2007.07.QBW
— When a "backup" of the Company Book is saved, the filename is something similar to: Dougs Company.07(backup Sep 29,2010 11:55AM).QBB

2. Every "Company" has an Admin (Administrator) and may also have other login user-status members
— Only Admin can make structural changes, other types of user-status can make individual entries only
— Admin PASSWORD expires every 6 months, and New Password must be created before use of company.
— Lost Admin PASSWORD is "serious business" in QuickBooks
— Contacting Intuit can enable a "one-time-PASSWORD-change" utility if you need to be rescued
— Using the correct Admin PASSWORD (even if expired) will open a Company "one last time" for purpose of creating new Password, otherwise you are locked out.

3. Each of the "years" of your Mother's companies "may" have been created as separate companies for purposes of QuickBooks.
— Administrator of one company is not able to open other companies.

4. More than likely you will be able to simply "open" the companies described as 2007 and 2008 <– the one's your Mother wants you to locate/open.
— Your job may turn out to be simply copying the company.QBW to a secure location for safe-keeping.
— You will probably do better by just using the already installed QuickBooks on your Mother's machine, instead of creating a fresh instance.
— But you can create a fresh instance and then open the files from another machine, but only with the correct company name and Admin PASSWORD (or one time password-recreation tool) (if you will be needing to use the password creator more than one time, let Intuit know that fact and ask for your options.)

Best Regards