Thursday 8 January 2009

Simply 2009 simply disappears with multiple monitors?!?

All of our accounting office clients have multiple monitor setups on their desks. All it took was to convince one of the partners to try it, for free, for a couple of weeks. Pretty soon there were extra monitors on all of the partners and bullpen worker's desks.

While this situation works really well for improving productivity, we have seen a few hiccups here and there. Strangely, many of the hiccups seem to be with Simply 2008 and 2009.

If a file is shared between two people at different times, and they have different monitor configurations, such as the extra monitor on the left instead of the right, and either one will open the file the Simply window will flash by and "disappear".

The user will see a button on the toolbar, but will not be able to do anything with it.

To get that window back on the screen do the following:
  • Right click on the Simply button on the Task Bar and click on Move.
  • Tap on any one of the direction arrows (-->) on the keyboard. (This locks the mouse to the window's header)
  • Move the mouse around and the window will eventually appear.

Now, some programs will remember the window position when it gets closed. But, as we are seeing with Simply Accounting, this may not be the case with any kind of consistency.

In some cases, there will be no right click option when the Task Bar button is clicked on. When this happens do the following (note that there will be no feedback that the process is working until the mouse is moved about and the application window appears):

  1. Click on the Simply button to make it active.
  2. On the keyboad press the following key combination together and release: ALT+Spacebar.
  3. Press the M key on the keyboard for Move.
  4. Press the -->or any of the direction arrows on the keyboard. The mouse cursor should "disappear".
  5. Move the mouse about until the missing application window appears.

Once this situation has happened once or twice, then the remedy becomes second nature.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting problem Philip.

I know there are quite e few users working with dual monitors in Simply Accounting by Sage, but I haven't come across this problem yet. If you haven't found a permanent solution, visit our User Forum and post the problem there. Someone may have already figured it out! You can find the User Forum at http://www.simplyaccounting.com/community