BTC lost via Multi-bit

[hellion]

Hello all...

I recently installed Multi-bit 0.5.12 to receive BTC from an associate. Installation went fine with no hitches. I also renamed a wallet (CandyCoatedPoison) specifically for this transaction.
I followed protocol, hit the receive, and provided the associate the receive address. Transaction of .275 BTC was successfully made, showed up in the wallet and synced to the network. Once this happened, I went to eat, came back, and everything was as I left it. I shut Multi-bit down properly and two days later, I opened it up and:

there was no balance. As I understand it, Multi-bit should have opened with the wallets I had closed with two days before. Yet, there was no record of the wallet I renamed (and password protected).
When I "opened" the directory to open the wallet, I noticed a few things:
(1) that besides the renamed wallet (CandyCoatedPoison), there was no associated key file, however, there was an info file and a number of rolling backups;
(2) the multibit wallet, however, had a key, info, spvchain, checkpoints, properties, and one rolling backup file;
(3) that when attempting to open the multibit.wallet file, I receive an error: "com.google.protobuf.invalidProtocolBufferException Message missing required fields: network_identifier". This also applies to the multi-bit rolling backup. That is, when attempting to open the actual multibit.wallet, it reverts to attempting to open the backup and gives me the aforementioned error.

I sit here and wonder whether the transaction saved into the default multi-bit wallet file instead of the renamed password protected (CandyCoatedPoison) wallet file...

I have tried resetting blockchain and transactions a number of times to no avail. But that was with the renamed wallet and not the multi-bit wallet since i cannot open it up.

I also tried to updating to the latest version, 0.5.17 without uninstalling 0.5.12 (in case of bugs) and that has not worked either. I have not deleted any files within the multi-bit directory shared by both versions of the multi-bit program.

I used "https://blockchain.info" using the aforementioned receiving address in the transaction, and I could see that its balance is 0.275 BTC. So I know that the Bitcoins are "there" (wherever "there" is).

Program seems very simple to use but I am scratching my head as to how I can get the correct balance in my multi-bit wallet. I did use multi-bit.org for answers before sharing my dilemma with Bitcointalk.

This program is installed on Linux.

Thank you all who are able to help me resolve this issue.

[BookLover]

You say you shut down multibit "properly", could you tell us exactly what you did to shut it down. (e.g. did you close the wallet before shutting down or did you just hit close?)

[hellion]

Thank  you for the question..

I mentioned shutting down properly to mean that I did not force it to close.

I simply hit File and Exit...

I did not close the wallet at all. Never thought to given that it had been synced with the network.

[BookLover]

Can you provide your receiving address?

You say "renamed a wallet", does this mean you have multiple wallets?  If so could you have possible sent the coins to the wrong wallet?

Try going to the key-backup of CandyCoatedPoison and importing the private key to another wallet.  This page should explain where the key backup is:https://multibit.org/en/help/v0.5/help_fileDescriptions.html

[hellion]

Thank you for your assistance. I was quite sure that I was clear in my original post. Perhaps not. I was hoping to prevent any misunderstandings.
Thank you for your patience.

(1) Yes, it would mean that I have two wallets: one named CandyCoatedPoison.wallet and the other is the default multibit.wallet

(2) As stated in my original post, there is NO key file for CandyCoatedPoison but there is one (and many other files) associated with multibit.wallet.

(3) Took your advice but instead I took the key-backup from multi-bit.wallet and importing it into CandyCoatedPoison.wallet..

And it worked. Thank you very much. Simpler than I thought it would be.

Already made a backup too...