SageForum for UK versions of Sage 50- Help and support.

Back up - 'Error occurred while trying to connect to the Sage Data Service'

This is resolved by changing sage to use a UNC path rather than a mapped drive letter.

To do this edit the company file with Notepad (do not use anything else)
The company file is a file called just company with no file extension, when you try to open it windows will prompt you with a choice of applications to use, only use notepad to edit it.
The company file is typically located at C:\ProgramData\Sage\Accounts\2015\
ProgramData is a hidden folder so you need to enable visibility in windows explorer

To find out what a drive letter unc path is open a command prompt and type "net use"
Edit the company file

Mine had
so I changed it to
I hope this helps you all.

Our problem is similar, but only occurs when the people on the client machines try to do a backup.

We've got the Sage machine drive mapped to a drive letter on the client machines and the program loads the data directly from the machine acting as a Sage server with no problems at all. It's only when they try to do a backup that the error "an error occurred while trying to connect to the sage data service" arises. This then crashes Sage on the client machines.

Backing up on the Sage server works fine and we're using this as a workaround until I can find a solution. Oddly the backup was working until last week. (Wednesday 18th I think)

This is the solution, Sage 50 no longer supports mapped drives.

Thanks, I'll try it when I'm next in that office, but it does seem strange that the client machines access the data file fine using mapped drives in the company file for normal day to day use, but not when running the backup.

Hi,

I am having the same type of issue,

After trying the above I am still getting the same error message.

I have checked the services are running correctly users can login in update information and save but cannot backup.

Perhaps you made a mistake, If you go to Help>About what is your data path?

Just an update.
Changing the mapped drive letter to the UNC path definitely works. Accessing data fine and now backup works smoothly.
Odd it stopped working suddenly, I guess Sage must have changed this recently as it was working on our network. A shame Sage didn't let everyone know about the change.
Anyway, thanks for the advice.