Restoring Non-Backup Databases

On occasion, users need to reinstall DONATION (e.g. after a hard drive crash) and they have a copy of the database file (normally named DONATION4.DB) but do not have an up-to-date database backup file (normally named DONATION4.DB.GBK, or DONATION-YYYY-MM-DD.DB.GBK, where YYYY-MM-DD is replaced by the backup date). This menu option allows you to recover in that case. (If you do have an up-to-date backup file DONATION4.DB.GBK or DONATION-YYYY-MM-DD.DB.GBK, use it instead, with the Backup/Restore à Restore Database menu option.)

To do this, select Backup/Restore à Restore Non-Backup Database. It will prompt you with a "Restore Database Copy" dialog box, where you select the  database file copy and the directory it is in. The file has to have the same name as your current database file. So if your database has the normal filename DONATION4.DB (which it will, unless you are using Database à Switch Databases to handle multiple databases), then the file to be restored will also be named DONATION4.DB. Once you select the file to restore, just follow the prompts, and it will do the restore.

If you are using Database à Switch Databases to handle multiple databases, you can only restore a copy of the database that you are currently using. So if you are currently on a second database named DONATION4.OTHER, the file you would restore would also be named DONATION4.OTHER.

The restore is done by completely replacing your existing database file with a copy of the other file. Once this has been completed, it will restart the program so that it can use the newly restored database.

Restoring Older Backups

If you try to restore a non-backup database that is older than your current data (i.e. you have entered further donations, with later dates, than are in the database you have selected to restore), the program will give you a very explicit warning about this, and ask you twice to confirm that you really wish to do this. That's because doing such a restore will cause the more recent data, entered since that earlier database, to be lost!

Restoring donation3.db Backup Files from Previous Versions of DONATION

Database files and backups made with versions of DONATION prior to version 3.00 can not be restored directly to version 3.00 or later using Backup/Restore à Restore Non-Backup Database, because a different database format was used. If you need to restore a previous-version backup (e.g. a file named DONATION3.DB) please use the Backup/Restore à Restore Old Database (DONATION3.DB) menu option instead. It may prompt you to install additional components needed to do the restore - if so, read those prompts carefully and follow their instructions.

Restoring for users of the Network Version

Only a user on the computer that has the Network Server version installed on it can do restores. Users of the Network Client version will receive a message explaining that they cannot do restores.