First off, you should always manually check the backup destination to see whether or not Memeo backed up the file. It may have done it quickly and without notifying you (especially if you have the “Show Desktop Alerts” option turned off). Files are stored on the backup destination using the same path as the original file. For example, if you are backing up the file “C:\MyFolder\MyFile.doc” on a networked machine where the backup folder is called \\machine1\MyBackups and you set the backup job name to “Job1”, the file will be stored as: \\machine1\MyBackups\Memeo\Job1\C_\MyFolder\MyFile.doc Memeo also stores a .dcm file for each file that is backed up (in this example, it would be called “MyFile.doc.dcm”). This file contains information about the stored file and should not be modified or deleted! These files are normally marked “hidden” so you may need to set your folder view to show hidden files in order to see them.

Note that for “Secure” backups, the actual files are stored in an encrypted form in a completely different directory structure, but the .dcm files are stored the same way as “Accessible” backups. If you have verified that a file is really not on the destination, there are several possible reasons why Memeo might not have backed it up:

1. The path or file extension (file type) of the file does not match the backup rules that you selected when you configured the backup job. If this is the case you need to modify your backup rules.
2. One of the folders in the file’s path is marked “hidden” or “system.” Memeo does not back up any files in folders that are marked “hidden” or “system” (or files in any sub-folders of a hidden or system folder) unless the folder itself is part of the rule. To clarify: Let’s assume you have a folder called “Folder2” whose full path is C:\Folder1\Folder2 and that folder contains some text files you want to back up. If you create a rule to back up C:\Folder1, and Folder2 is marked “hidden,” the text files will not be backed up because Memeo will not look into Folder2. On the other hand, if you create a rule to backup C:\Folder1\Folder2, Memeo will back up the files because you have specified the hidden folder as part of the rule itself.
3. The file is a .tmp or .log file. By default, Memeo excludes these files from back up. You can remove this exclusion by clicking the “Change folders and files for backup” link and clicking the “Exceptions (Advanced)” tab near the bottom of the window. Then unselect the appropriate exclusion.
4. The file is in a subfolder of the Windows “Program Files” folder (this is typically “C:\Program Files”). By default, Memeo excludes these files from back up. You can remove this exclusion by clicking the “Change folders and files for backup” link and clicking the “Exceptions (Advanced)” tab near the bottom of the window. Then unselect the appropriate exclusion.
5. The file may be locked by another application. If this is the case, Memeo cannot back up the file and will put it into the “retry queue” and re-attempt the backup every couple of minutes until successful. You can see the retry queue for each backup job by selecting the backup job in the main Memeo window and clicking the “Retry Queue” tab at the bottom of the window.
6. There was an error backing up the file. You can check for this by clicking the “Log” tab at the bottom of the main Memeo window to see if there are any errors reported for the file in question. Errors are typically displayed in red text. If you are unable to correct the problem based on the error message you will need to send in your log files by right-clicking on the Memeo icon in the taskbar tray and selecting the “Send Feedback…” option. Be sure to include a description of the problem and your email address so we can contact you.
7. One error in particular that users may see in the Log tab is “The file’s path is too long.” Windows has a limitation that any path to a file must be 260 characters or less. Because Memeo has to take the existing file path and pre-pend the backup folder name to it (as described in the above example), the resulting path can exceed the 260 character limit. In this case, the customer has 4 options:
   1. Rename the file if it has a very long name.
   2. Rename any folder that is part of the path that has a very long name.
   3. Rename the backup destination and/or backup job name to a shorter name.
   4. Exclude the folders which are causing problems if you don't really need backups of those files.

Only you can decide which option is appropriate. Obviously, options a & b are not always possible or practical. Also, in the current version (1.70.1213) Memeo has some problems handling renamed files; so if you want to go with option a or b you should first determine from the Log tab which files have problems, shorten their paths/names, and then recreate your backup job from scratch. We have fixed the issues with file & folder renaming and these fixes will be in the next version of Memeo.
Option c requires that you remove your backup job and create a new one since there is no way to change the backup destination for an existing backup job. Option d is the easiest but again may not be practical.

Note: For more information on AutoBackup features, visit www.memeo.com.