Summary:

There are three reasons for custom reports missing in ShoWorks:

1) When ShoWorks is running on more than one computer, one user may have some custom reports not available to another user on a different machine.

OR...

2) When updating ShoWorks or reinstalling, you will loose all custom reports that you have created if you attempt to run an update patch (or install) more than once without first opening ShoWorks before running the update again or choose 'No' when prompted to 'Restore Settings'.

OR...

3) After updating ShoWorks or reinstalling, and choosing 'Yes' to 'Restore Settings?' (which normally would restore your custom reports), you encounter an error which means that your previous reports were corrupt.

Background:

Custom reports by default are stored in the actual ShoWorks program file and NOT the data file. This is to allow access to custom reports no matter what data file one may have open.

Solution if reports are missing because you are changing computers or upgrading to a new version:

See the article: How to backup reports or changing computers and sharing reports on multiple computers

Solution if reports are missing unexpectedly after running an update or re-installing ShoWorks:

1. Using "Computer" locate C:\Program Files (x86)\ShoWorks 2020\BACKUP\Program
2. You need to look for files that over 15,000KB or 15MB in size. The name of this file can be either "sw.mdb" OR "ShoWorks 2020.swkdb" OR "ShoWorks 2020.001" OR anything like this. You may have to try each of these but try in the order above (you may try looking for the file that has the most recent date 'Last Modified'). One of these files will have your reports. You will need to rename the files to have an extension of ".mdb". For example. "myfile.mdb". 
3. Once you have renamed this file, start ShoWorks.
4. In ShoWorks, select Reports > Manage Reports.
5. Click "Import Reports" 
6. Navigate and locate the file above and click "Open". If there are no reports, then repeat with one of the other files. You will have the reports in one of them.
7. If you encounter an error, then one or more of the reports or report index is corrupt. You may be able to salvage one or more of the reports by importing them one at a time, taking note of which report is causing the error. Once you have encountered an error during the import, you must exit ShoWorks and begin the process again and continue the process skipping over the previous report you had attempted to import. You may not be able to salvage any further reports. This is why it is important to backup your reports frequently (see instructions below).

Important considerations to prevent report loss:

1) Make frequent backups of your reports (select Reports the Backup Reports).  Follow the onscreen instructions for information on how to restore these reports to other copies of ShoWorks. If you receive an error and cannot backup reports because of an error, it is likely that one or more reports or report index is corrupt (see above steps for recovering corrupt reports).

2) Avoid corruption of the Reports by avoiding a known “bug” that is part of Microsoft Access. Report corruption will occur if you save a report over an existing name that already exist. In other words, if you receive a message when saving a new or editing a report “A report with that name already exists, do you want to overwrite it?”, you should click 'NO', and choose a different name (such as adding a number at the end). You can delete the original report later. This is the number one cause of report corruption and loss.