Sage 50 "Unable to preview form or report with CA-RET
Sage 50's built-in preview engine failed to draw a form or report on screen, usually a display or template problem rather than lost data.
“Unable to preview form or report with CA-RET.” is what Sage 50 (sold as Peachtree in the US and Simply Accounting in Canada) shows when the component that draws forms and reports on screen fails to start or fails to render. CA-RET is that preview engine. Despite the alarming wording, the message usually points at the rendering step, not at your books: in most cases your transactions and balances are intact, and only the on-screen drawing of the document failed.
Why it happens
The preview engine can fail for reasons that have nothing to do with your data: a printer configuration it cannot handle, a session that started in a bad state, or a display setting it dislikes. It can also fail for reasons that do: a form template that is damaged or missing, or a company data file damaged enough that the report engine cannot read what it needs. Which applies to you depends on whether the failure affects one form or everything.
Restart and retry
Close Sage 50 completely, sign out of Windows and back in, reopen the company, and try the preview again. A fair number of these failures are one-off rendering glitches that clear on a clean restart. If it recurs immediately, move on.
Check the printer, then print instead of previewing
The preview engine consults your Windows printer setup before it draws anything, so a disconnected or otherwise invalid default printer can make previewing fail even when printing would work. Set a valid, connected printer as the Windows default, then send the same form or report straight to the printer rather than to the preview window. If it prints, your data is fine and the problem is confined to preview.
Try a different form
If preview fails for one document type, such as invoices, while other forms and reports preview normally, the form template itself is probably damaged. Switch that document to a standard built-in form and preview again; the exact wording of that setting depends on your release, so we will not guess menu names here. If the built-in form previews, recreate or reselect the custom form.
Test a backup
If every form and every report fails, the company file itself is the likely culprit. Restore your most recent backup to a separate folder, without overwriting the live file, and try previewing in the restored copy. If the backup previews and the live file does not, the live file is damaged and will keep failing until it is repaired.
When the file needs professional attention
Persistent failures across all forms and reports, especially with an old or missing backup, mean the data file should be examined by our engineers before anything else is attempted. We repair damaged Sage 50, Peachtree, and Simply Accounting data files, and every engagement starts with a free evaluation so you know what is recoverable before deciding anything. If you were already planning a move to QuickBooks, the source file has to be readable first, so repair normally comes before conversion.
The most useful next step is the backup test above: within minutes it tells you whether you are facing a display problem or a damaged file, and either answer narrows the fix considerably.