Need for periodical backups ..... yet again ..... please

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Need for periodical backups ..... yet again ..... please

Postby Happy Harry » Fri Oct 11, 2024 12:25 pm

Hello Gary and Mark

I have asked for this over many years and it is still not possible and when the Internet, or Betfair, or Windows, or BA fall over I am screwed. The reason for that is that BA locks the spreadsheets so until I close BA I can not periodically save them and if BA or Windows or Excel or the Betfair API has crashed I am screwed.

Today something failed. I actually think that Betfair had an issue and the reason I think that is that I got an error late afternoon telling me they had an issue when I was looking at balances. Be that as it may.

Later though BA/Windows/Excel, who knows what fell over and as a result I can pull the bets from Betfair. And match them by value but that is a very painful process.

Can I once again request that BA either does not lock the spreadsheets in which case I can periodically save them by either including a macro or using an external script or that BA includes a periodic save function. Please. Because recovering hundreds of bets by matching them is an aweful way of recovering what has happened during the day.

I am not trying to blame what the problem that caused BA/Windows/Betfair API to crash. But I am blaming BA for not allowing me to periodically save the sheets, or BA to have that function built in and it has been a long standing problem. Even a periodic save of the locked sheets to another directory at least would save things up to the crash.

What do you think? And I have asked before.

Thanks.
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Re: Need for periodical backups ..... yet again ..... please

Postby Happy Harry » Fri Oct 11, 2024 2:27 pm

Gary and Mark

another wild thought that might be a huge improvement from the current problem.

How about a streaming text file that records every bet including which spreadsheet it came from and the outcome. So sort of like the current standard spreadsheets do anyway but updates every result. Would need a date field as well but essentially replicates at a macro level what BA does already.

The problem is that if BA or Windows or Betfair unrecoverably crash everything is lost because BA locks the sheets.

Robert
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Re: Need for periodical backups ..... yet again ..... please

Postby GaryRussell » Mon Oct 14, 2024 10:11 am

I will add an option to specify a folder where it records the bets including which workbook and worksheet they are from automatically sometime this week.

I'm not sure how Betting Assistant can irrevocably lock Excel. Have you tried killing the Betting Assistant.exe process in the task manager when this happens? If you do this and Excel is frozen then the problem could be coming from your workbook and Betting Assistant is stuck for this reason.
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Re: Need for periodical backups ..... yet again ..... please

Postby GaryRussell » Tue Oct 29, 2024 9:49 am

Please install Version 1.3.2.8g

This version has an additional option in Preferences|Files to enter a folder name to store the back ups. They are in .csv format. You can also set a number of days to keep them after which it will delete older files.

Screenshot_Excel_results_folder.png
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Re: Need for periodical backups ..... yet again ..... please

Postby Happy Harry » Thu Nov 07, 2024 11:23 am

CashBack2nd7Nov2024.JPG
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Hello Gary

Thanks for that. I have been away for a bit and not updated and been bitten big time today. Here is a screen shot of what happened when trying to close out today and while I can recover from this it is a mongrel of a process to do so. This is the results situation for all 8 sheets of interest today. Some hundreds of bets and for sure not saying that it is a Gruss problem but recovering the missing information for the day is an aweful experience. Does not happen often but when it does it really hurts.

HH
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Re: Need for periodical backups ..... yet again ..... please

Postby Happy Harry » Thu Nov 07, 2024 11:38 am

So trying literally all options I can think of nothing I does will recover the missing bet information. What is interesting is that if I clear filled in fields then they come back with the same Bet reference information and same "RESULT_NOT_AVAILABLE" result but no data.

This implies, correctly that the bet was placed. The information is in the API but the data is not coming back or not being loaded into the spreadsheet.

I wonder why.

I will leave all the sheets open until the morning and see if anything improves overnight.

HH
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Re: Need for periodical backups ..... yet again ..... please

Postby Happy Harry » Thu Nov 07, 2024 12:22 pm

And here is a screenshot taken some 48 mins later for exactly the same spreadsheet. I did try it again some 30 mins ago but no different.

So the problem is Betfair it seems.
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Re: Need for periodical backups ..... yet again ..... please

Postby Happy Harry » Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:57 am

Back to the periodical backups.

Thank you very much. That works very well so in practical terms while the site might go down or something might crash any valid data that is there can now be recovered. That was not the case previously where while there was an option to restore previous results that only worked where the program had been legitimately shutdown exactly as the information says. So a crash and no dice.

Love it.

Many thanks.
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Re: Need for periodical backups ..... yet again ..... please

Postby GaryRussell » Wed Nov 13, 2024 12:37 pm

I'm glad it helps. When you get the chance can you update to Version 1.3.2.8h as there is an issue in reporting results for partially matched bets.
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Re: Need for periodical backups ..... yet again ..... please

Postby Happy Harry » Thu Nov 14, 2024 3:30 am

Thanks. I have known about that issue for a long time and assumed that because it is coming from betfair where the result in the sheets are not correct when it has been partially matched that it was not solvable. I have been pulling the detail results totals for each day where the totals dont match to find the problem(s) and then manually correcting them in my results database.
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Sports betting software from Gruss Software


The strength of Gruss Software is that it’s been designed by one of you, a frustrated sports punter, and then developed by listening to dozens of like-minded enthusiasts.

Gruss is owned and run by brothers Gary and Mark Russell. Gary discovered Betfair in 2004 and soon realised that using bespoke software to place bets was much more efficient than merely placing them through the website.

Gary built his own software and then enhanced its features after trialling it through other Betfair users and reacting to their improvement ideas, something that still happens today.

He started making a small monthly charge so he could work on it full-time and then recruited Mark to help develop the products and Gruss Software was born.

We think it’s the best of its kind and so do a lot of our customers. But you can never stand still in this game and we’ll continue to improve the software if any more great ideas emerge.