N.B. The options described on this page are not available with the free Lite version of DONATION. Because the Lite version doesn't support mail merge, there is no need to backup the mail merge letter files.
There may be several situations in which you want to backup and restore your customized letter (and receipt) files that you use with Letters à One Letter or Letters à Mass Mailing, including:
| • | You use the program on two computers (e.g. home and office), and you want to transfer customized letters from one computer to the other. |
| • | You use the program on a network, and you want to transfer customized letters from one of your computers running DONATION on the network to another. |
And of course, you should always back up the letters periodically in any case, just in case your hard drive dies. Please note that the backing up of your letters files is not included in the normal Backup/Restore à Backup Database routine, which only backs up your actual data in your database (and which is much more important!).
Backing Up
To back up your letters files from the Letters subdirectory of the Data Directory to another specified directory (e.g. on a diskette, a writeable CD, a USB memory key, or another hard drive on your network that you have access to etc.), select Letters à Backup. The following window will come up:
If you have used this window before, your last-used Letters Backup Directory will appear in the field by that name. If the field is empty, or you want to select a different directory, you can type it in, or click Browse... and a window will come up in which you can select from all of the drives and directories to which you have access.
Once that is specified, just click Backup. It will confirm that you want to back up from your Letters directory to the specified Letters Backup Directory, then copy all HTML files (with filenames matching *.htm*) that are either newer in the Letters directory, or not present at all in the Letters Backup Directory. It will skip any files whose names end in "_save.htm", because those are the output merged files created by doing mail merges with Letters à One Letter or Letters à Mass Mailing, and as such there is no good reason to back them up. (They are not your customized letters files.) If the backup is successful, you will get a message saying so, with details of how many files were copied and how many were skipped because copies weren't needed, and this window will then close.
Restoring
To restore letters files from a Letters Backup Directory (e.g. on a diskette, a writeable CD, a USB memory key, or another hard drive on your network that you have access to etc.) to the Letters subdirectory of your Data Directory, select Letters à Restore. The following window will come up:
If you have used either this window or the Letters Backup window before, your last-used Letters Backup Directory will appear in the field by that name. If the field is empty, or you want to select a different directory, you can type it in, or click Browse... and a window will come up in which you can select from all of the drives and directories to which you have access.
Once that is specified, just click Restore. It will confirm that you want to restore from the specified Letters Backup Directory to your Letters directory, then copy all files that are either newer in the Letters Backup Directory, or not present at all in the Letters directory. Again, it will skip any files whose names end in "_save.htm", though there probably won't be any since the backup routine doesn't copy such files to the Letters Backup Directory. If the restore is successful, you will get a message saying so, with details of how many files were copied and how many were skipped because copies weren't needed, and this window will then close.
Copying Letters Files from One Computer to Another
To do this, use Letters à Backup on the computer you want to copy the Letters Files from, copying to something you can take the files on to the other computer, e.g. a diskette, writeable CD, or USB memory key. Bring that to the other computer, and use Letters à Restore to restore from it to that computer's DONATION program's Letters directory.
If you are doing this between two computers on the same network, and the computer you are copying from has write access to the hard drive of the computer you are copying to (e.g. through a mapped drive letter), you can do this in just one step, using only Letters à Backup. Just specify the Letters directory of the other computer as the Letters Backup Directory. For instance, if the other computer's C: drive is mapped to Z: on your computer, and you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, you would specify Z:\Program Data\Cooperstock Software\Donation\Letters as the Letters Backup Directory. (The specific data directory will vary with other versions of Windows.) Or, you can use UNC paths, e.g. \\OtherComputer\CDrive\Program Data\Cooperstock Software\Donation\Letters, if CDrive is the name of a share for the C: drive on a computer named OtherComputer.
Doing the File Copies Directly
There is nothing magical at all about these menu options. All they do is make copying the files a bit easier, and protect against overwriting newer version of letters files with older versions of the same files. If you want to copy files directly, e.g. using My Computer or Windows Explorer, that's fine too.