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For various reasons you may need to move DONATION from one computer to another. This would include changing staff (such as Treasurers) in your organization, upgrading to a new computer, or rebuilding your computer after a hard disk crash.
To do this, you will need to follow a few steps. If you are not very comfortable with operations such as copying files, you may need to ask a more experienced friend or colleague to help.
| 1. | Re-install the program on the new computer, using the current full installation program DONINST.EXE. (If you don't already have a copy of this, download it from the program's web site.) |
Note: It does not work to just copy the DONATION program directories (C:\Program Files\Donation etc.) from one your computer to the other. You must do the install on the 2nd computer.
| 2. | Copy your database backup file, DONATION4.DB.gbk, from the old computer to the new computer. Follow the instructions under Transfer your Data between Computers to do this, via backup and restore.
Note: If the old computer was running a version 2.70b or earlier of DONATION, its database file is named donation3.db, not donation4.db. In that case, some extra steps are required. See this entry on the Support Forum for instructions on transferring their database to your computer. |
| 3. | If you are using Database à Switch Databases to handle multiple databases on the same computer, you will also have to copy all of your other database files, named DONATION4.something, to the new computer. In addition, you will have to copy the file databases.txt from the main DONATION program directory to the new computer – it lists your databases.
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| 4. | If you use the Letters menu options and have customized your letter or receipt files, follow the instructions in Backing up and Restoring Letters Files to copy those files from the old computer to the new computer. |
| 5. | Start up DONATION on both the old and the new computers. Go to Maintenance à Organization Info. Check that all of the settings are the same in both programs. If not, fix them up on the new computer. Do the same with Maintenance à Main Window Options and Maintenance à Receipt Options. The reason you have to do this is that a few of the settings on those windows are stored in the Windows Registry rather than in the database, and thus they cannot be copied automatically. |
That's it. The new computer should now have a copy of DONATION that is identical to the one on the old computer. Just continue your work on the new computer.
Note on Software Licensing
When you have DONATION installed on two computers for the same organization, you can apply the same License Key to both of them. See the section on Software Licensing and Evaluation for more details on License Keys. Alternatively, you can copy the file donsl.txt from the main DONATION program directory to the new computer - it contains your licensing information.
Copying your Mail Merge Letters
If you use the program's mail-merge letters facility, through the Letters menu options, and you have edited the letter or receipt files, you will also want to copy them to the new computer. They are in the Letters folder under the main installation folder for DONATION, i.e. normally in C:\Program Files\Donation\Letters.
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