Database Already Exists error on starting stickies

Hi,
Thought I may describe my experience with the error message "Database already exists" that was popping up every time stickies tried to start at Windows 10 startup (which is the way I have set it up). I had the problem occur for a few days before I sat down to try and fix it...

The Zhorn Knowledgebase has an item about this, and I'll copy it in here:
=======================
To fix the problem do the following:

• Close Stickies
  
• Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\stickies
  
• Move the following items into a temporary directory:
  
  
  
  • stickies.ini
    
  • options.ini
    
  • store.mdb
    
  • rtf (directory)
    
  • images (directory)
    
  
  
  
• Restart Stickies (at this point you'll see no data in the app - but don't worry, it's contained in the files above)
  
• Make a note of the Data directory, shown at the bottom of the About dialog
  
• Close Stickies
  
• Move the files and folders you gathered above to the Data directory, overwriting what's there (those are the empty data files)
  
• When you restart Stickies, you'll no longer get the error
  

===========================

So. This did not work for me.
(Also, this must be an old entry, the data folder is more likely to now be in ..... Users\[your profile]\AppData\Roaming\stickies )

Tried a few different approaches and what worked for me was:
- ... (do all the stuff to this point)....
- bring the old (populated) data files back in
- delete store.mdb and store.ldb
- restart Stickies.
- Answer any cleanup error messages you get (by deleting invalid files or whatever)
- Do "Restore..." from the Tray icon context menu

Your data should all be back.

Note: the ldb and mdb extensions are related to MS database functions, and ldb is related to database locking, so it may have worked with just deleting store.ldb - but I did both and it worked, so that's my path...

Would be remiss of me not to heap some praise on this little utility that has been a trusty sidekick on my system at work and play for what feels like a zillion years now. And Tom, the simple backup strategy of multiple time-phased copies is one of the most elegantly simple and effective systems I've come across. It has survived many a slash & burn operation on my PCs over the time, accidental and intentional.
BIG applause.

Cheers

The error message really just means "I can't open the Jet database OK".  I've found in the past that happens when people misunderstand where restored files should live, and put them alongside the exe, where the .mdb file can't be opened read/write.

However, I guess you found that it was instead some other type of corruption in the .mdb file which is why you needed to do something different.

In any case, the next release of Stickies switches out the Jet database library for SQLITE, so the above will disappear as a source of trouble, I hope.

Tom