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Backing Up

When the day's work with your Standard application is done, we advise you to make a back-up. It is a good idea to save a copy of the file on a separate hard disk or CD-ROM and store it in a safe place. It might seem unnecessary to make a back-up every day, but the short time this takes is a good investment for the day something goes wrong with the hard disk.

To back up your data is particularly important when, as in the case of a Standard database, the financial information of your company is involved. If you should lose all your data, you will find yourself in a very awkward situation, missing all invoices, receipts, reports etc. Make sure you make a back-up each time you have been working with your accounts. Name your copies systematically with dates so that you can easily restore the database, should an accident occur.

If you get a virus on your computer, you must first try to establish the date when your computer was infected. In this case you must restore your data from a back-up created before the infection date. Otherwise you run the obvious risk of re-infecting the computer again.

The method of backing up that is built in to every Standard application is fast and economical. The data will be saved in a back-up file that takes up a minimal amount of space, and the back-up files are independent of the program versions. This means that restoring from a back-up file will be successful, even if you have updated the version of your Standard application since making the back-up. This is known as the "text back-up" method of backing up.

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Use the back-up feature built in to every Standard application to guarantee a successful restoration.

You can also copy the database file as it appears on your hard disk. While copying the database file can play an important part in your back-up strategy, note that restoring from a copied database will not be successful if you have updated the version of your Standard application since making the back-up.

You must also carry out regular checks to make sure you can restore your database from the resulting back-up files or database copies.

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Regularly check that you can restore from your back-up files.

To create a text back-up, follow these steps:

  1. If you are using Standard Accounts, click the [Module] button in the Master Control panel or use the ⌘-0 (zero) keyboard shortcut to go into the System module.

  2. In every Standard product, click the [Routines] button in the Master Control panel. A list of routines appears:

    Click the [Exports] in the list of routines to open the list of Export functions. You can also use the ⌘-E keyboard shortcut to open this list.

  3. Double-click 'Database Text Backup' ('Backup' if you are using Standard Nominal Ledger).

  4. The 'Specify Text Backup' window appears. Here you can enter a description of the back-up file that you are about to create. You can use up to 40 characters. If you later need to restore from a back-up, this description will be shown in the list of importable files to help you select the correct one.

    Enter an appropriate description and click [Run].

  5. A dialogue box will open, allowing you to name and place the export file. Enter the name of the file in the filename area and locate it in the appropriate folder or directory in the usual way. The name of the back-up should include the date the back-up was made. For ease of importing later, it is recommended that you give the file name a .txt extension. Then, click [Save].

    A message window informs you about the progress of the export.

When the export is finished, you are brought back to the 'Exports' list. Close it using the close box.

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Under no circumstances should you edit or change a back-up file with another program.


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