Help › Archive and Document History
Archive and Document History — Can a Deleted Document Come Back?
This page covers three helper windows: Old Records, which finds and restores deleted documents, Document History, which shows how many times and by whom a document was changed, and Document Preview, which shows the quote exactly as the customer will receive it. None of the three is on the dock — they open from inside other windows. The most important sentence here: a deleted document is not lost, but when restored it is not the same document.
The visible names of the three archive cards
| Window name | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Order Card (Archive) | The deleted order's header, lines and totals snapshot; read-only. |
| Invoice Card (Archive) | The deleted invoice snapshot with its linked delivery-note information; read-only. |
| Quotation Card (Archive) | The deleted quotation's header, lines and totals snapshot; read-only. |
None has fields to fill: there is no add/edit/delete. The only write action for an authorised user is Restore; verify its result as a new record dated today, under the rule in section 4 below.
1. How does HNR keep a deleted document?
HNR keeps a document by taking a photograph of it. When a document is changed and when it is deleted, the server writes a photograph of its previous state into a backup table. This has two important consequences:
A photograph is taken only at the moment of a change. If you saved an invoice once and never touched it, its history is empty — not a shortcoming but a natural consequence. A document saved three times has two photographs: each one is the state before that save.
Figure 1 — When photographs are taken
2. Document History — "who changed this invoice?"
When you open an invoice, order or quote card you can view its change history. The list runs oldest to newest and each row is a moment of saving: username, date and time, amount and VAT. Click a row and the program pulls up that version's line items and the difference from the one before it — you see which line was added and which price changed.
The answer to "I did not type that price" lives here: the history carries who and when, stamped with the username. The purpose is not to find a culprit but to find the mistake fast — what usually surfaces is not bad intent but two people updating the same document with different information.
3. Old Records — the deleted-document browser
This window opens from the "Old Records" button on the Invoice, Order and Quote lists. The button is not visible to everyone: it appears only for a user with delete permission for that document type. Visibility is cosmetic — the real gate is on the server, where an unauthorised request is refused as well.
| Gesture | What it does |
|---|---|
| Single click | Selects the row |
| Double click | Opens the archive card in a separate window |
| Right click | "Open archive card" and — if the document was restored — "Open the restored document" |
| 🔄 / F5 | Refreshes the list — this screen does not refresh by itself |
For two reasons: (1) HNR reuses the numbers of deleted documents. Once a number has been reused, the old owner's photograph cannot be told apart from the living document — the program deliberately leaves it out, because showing the wrong document as "deleted" is worse than not showing it. (2) If the scan hits a ceiling, a warning appears in the top bar: older deletions may not be listed.
On the order list some rows carry an invoiced badge. When an order turns into an invoice it is likewise removed from the system — but that is not a user deletion, it is the normal flow of the work. Such records cannot be restored; if you try, the program stops you with a clear error. What you would need to undo is not the order anyway, but the invoice it became.
4. "Restore" — the button that needs the most care
Opening an archive card shows you a read-only document with a Restore button at the bottom. Before you press it, know this: Restore does not put the old document back the way it was. It writes the document again as a NEW record dated TODAY.
Figure 2 — What Restore does and does not do
(1) Might this document already have been restored? If the right-click menu offers "Open the restored document", it has been; press Restore a second time and you end up with two of the same document, double-counting stock or balance. (2) Why was it deleted? If it was deleted because it was wrong, restoring brings the mistake back; the right move is to enter the correct version as a new document.
5. Document Preview — what the customer will see
Right-click a row on the quote or order list and choose "View PDF" to open the branded, print-ready form of the document. Two details matter: (1) the window opens inside the program, not as a new browser tab — the document does not leak out; (2) the PDF you see is the very one that will be sent to the customer, not something similar. (3) This preview, "Download as PDF", "Send by e-mail" and paper printing all use the same Print Designer form (Settings › Print Forms) — screen and paper cannot drift apart.
Looking at the preview before sending a quote takes ten seconds and prevents the three most frequently caught mistakes: the wrong account title, an empty payment-terms line, and an old address in the letterhead. The letterhead comes from Settings › Company details.
6. The Browser window
The program also has a browser window: it exists to open an address you use often — your bank, a courier tracker, an e-invoice portal — without leaving HNR. In the desktop version it uses a separate session, so a login here does not touch your personal browser. In the browser version some sites refuse to be embedded at all; it is the same limit described for Mail and WhatsApp.
7. Frequently asked
I deleted a document and it is not in Old Records. Is it lost?
The photograph most likely still exists, but the list cannot show it — its number may have been reused (the rule in section 4), or the scan hit its ceiling. If it must still be found, tell your system administrator; they can search the backup table directly.
I restored it but the date came out wrong
Not a fault but the design: a restored document is written with today's date. If you need the original date, open the new document and correct the date field by hand. If you are dating it into a closed period, consult your accountant first — changing a past month's figures can affect filings.
Can these screens damage data?
Document History, the archive card, the preview and the browser write nothing — looking breaks nothing. The only button that writes is Restore, and even that creates a new document; it changes or deletes no existing record.
The Old Records window is slow to open
That is normal. Finding deleted documents requires scanning the whole backup table, and these tables carry hundreds of thousands of rows; live it takes a few seconds. That is why the screen does not refresh by itself — press 🔄 or F5 when you want it refreshed.
8. Glossary
| Turkish | Short description |
|---|---|
| Fotoğraf (yedek) | A copy of the document's previous state at the moment of change or deletion |
| Belge geçmişi | The chronological list of a document's save moments |
| Arşiv kartı | The read-only view of a deleted document |
| Geri Al | Writing an archived document as a new record dated today |
| Numara yeniden kullanımı | A deleted document's number being given to a new document |
| Tarama tavanı | The search reaching the oldest point it can look at |
The Print button at the top right produces an A4-friendly version. Related guides: List Screens, The Document Chain, Settings and Log.