[HOW TO] GMATPrep 2012: obtain exam logs, timing, AWA essay.

Hi all,

Many of us have been seeking to obtain exam logs once you exit the test on the new GMAT Prep software (2.1.279) which is based on Adobe Air. The software does NOT let you see the info once you exit the test review screen. Here's how to get the question numbers, your answer choices, timing per question etc. Importantly, this is the only way (to my knowledge) of recovering the text of your AWA essay which you wrote during each practice test.

GMATPrep 2012 saves a file called ‘preptool.vb’ in the following (hidden) directory:
C:\Users\[replace this with your name]\AppData\Roaming\GMATPrep\Local Store\

This ‘preptool.vb’ file is the log and can be opened using a SQL viewer/editor. I used 'SQLite Database Browser 2.0' (google it - no URLs allowed, yet!)
1. Open the file with SQLite browser.
2. Click on the 'browse data' tab then select the 'table' of interest. The exam log is saved under 'used_items'.
3. Export the data (File>Export>table as CSV file). You can also browse the data without exporting.
4. Open the CSV file with Excel and you have everything you need. Answer choices and timing for each question.

Sections are numbered as: 1. AWA, 2. Quantitative, 3. Verbal, 4. IR. Peculiarly, questions are numbered from '0' not '1'. Quant questions numbers are prefixed with '187:', verbal with '188:' and IR with '211:'. Time is displayed in seconds.

Finally, the log contains the data from both tests. I haven't tried ‘re-setting’ the tests to see if the program keeps adding data to the same 'preptool.vb' file so you should copy this file to another location before re-setting (just in case it does delete your first two attempts).

There are other potentially useful data in the other tables but I haven't got round to exploring them yet.

Enjoy! I hope this helps

PS. the (hidden) question pool is listed in C:\Program Files (x86)\GMATPrep2012\pack0\pack0.db
PPS. there is a (hidden) file, intriguingly called 'scoring.db', in C:\Program Files (x86)\GMATPrep2012\