Why am I receiving an 'Error loading archive' message when opening an archived incident on my test or upgrade site?

Environment:

Upgrade and Test sites, Archived Incidents

Issue:

Archived Incidents cannot be opened from the test or upgrade site, but they are available from the production site.

Error received: "Error occurred loading archive"

Resolution:

This is the normal behavior of the application; when incident archiving occurs, the incident that is archived is removed from the database and converted to a flat XML file that is stored on the file attachment server. During the creation of a test or upgrade site, file attachments are not copied due to disk space considerations. As such, attempting to open an archived incident (or any file attachment) will result in an error.

After the upgrade process is completed all file attachments including archived incidents will be available through the Archived Incidents component on the upgraded site.

Archiving can subsequently be enabled for incidents on the test site as explained in the following answer: Answer ID 6658: Archiving incidents on test or upgrade sites.