Thursday, February 11, 2010 6:01:50 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00) by Trevor Pierce 

I’ve had a few common themes appear in the support emails received about Tank Tracker and figured it would be a good idea to publish the suggestions and solutions here.

• I upgraded Tank Tracker to the latest release and all of my data is gone!! What now?
• In most cases your data is still intact but it may be hiding. The simplest cause of this is during the upgrade process a new default vehicle is generated and has no data associated with it. If you tap the arrow to the right of the title bar to change vehicles your original vehicle (and data) should be visible. To remove the new default vehicle simply go to the manage vehicles screen and swipe to delete the empty default vehicle. Be careful you don’t delete the wrong vehicle as there is no way to undo this action.
• In other cases the database file is not being picked up properly by the application. This is partly caused by the fact that in one of the recent updates to WebOS, the device actually changed where each app lives and stores its data. I’ve outlined the steps to get around this issue below:
1. Make a copy of your db file (more on this later)

To get to the file, connect your Pixi or Pre as a USB device and navigate to this folder (on my computer the Pre shows up as drive G):

G:\.app-storage\file_.var.usr.palm.applications.com.epicnorth.tanktracker_0

Copy the .db file you find in that folder to another location that you can find again, such as your desktop.

If the folder doesn't show up, it may be a hidden directory. If you're using Windows you can change the visibility settings on that folder.  While you're looking at the Pre in Windows Explorer, hit your Alt key on your keyboard to bring up the menu bar. From there you can go to Tools and then Folder Options. Once there, click on the View tab and make sure the radio button beside "Show hidden files, folders, and drives" is selected. If you're using Windows XP the menu bar should already be visible in Explorer. After that you should see the hidden folders on your Pre.

2. Uninstall the app.
3. Download and install the app from the App Catalog and start it up.
4. Connect the pre to your computer via USB and browse to the folder that contains the db files.
5. Copy your backed up version of the db and change the file name so that it matches the newer db file that was created when you reinstalled the app.
• If all else fails, please send an email to support@epicnorth.com and we’ll try to get the issue resolved.
  
  
• When the application starts, all I see is a screen saying “Please Wait. Tank Tracker is loading your data…”
• At this time it’s not clear what the cause of this issue is. Sometimes it is corrected by reinstalling the application. To preserve your data while reinstalling the application you can follow the procedure outlined above.
  
  
• My last fillup won't register any mpg or any stats other than the fuel price. What is going on?
• The program can't calculate mpg until you've entered 2 consecutive tanks.
  Also, if you don't fill the tank to full and mark it as a partial tank, that won't be able to be used to calculate statistics.

The first tanks stats are determined when  you enter the odometer reading and gallons from the second tank since the formula for mpg is distance / gallons.
The second tanks stats were determined when you entered your odometer and gallons from this last tank.
Essentially calculating the statistics will always be done for the previous tank.

• When should I mark a fillup as a partial or incomplete tank?
• You only have to mark it as a partial tank when you don't fill the tank to full. The partial tank feature is for people who occasionally put only a few dollars in the tank and don't fill it all the way back up.
  Partial tanks won't be able to be used for mileage calculations so that's why they have to be noted.



• Importing data fails
• Some users have had issues importing data that they have previously exported from Tank Tracker. In versions prior to 1.6 the file export contained additional columns that are unneeded for performing an import. If you open the file in a text editor or spreadsheet program and remove the columns that don’t belong, you should be able to get the file to import successfully. The expected columns are as follows:
  
  Month, Day, Year, Odometer Reading, Price Per Gallon, Gallons Purchased, Partial Tank (True/False)

The actual file should look like the following:

8,27,2009,84321,2.59,10.3,False
9,3,2009,85122,2.61,11.2,True

 

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