Hello DONATION beta testers. I have a new version for you to take a look at, if you have a few minutes. As usual, you can get it from www.software4nonprofits.com/pretest.htm.
Here is what is included in version 3.31 so far, in rough order of importance:
- Changed the saving to PDF files so that it doesn’t encrypt/protect the PDF file from modification unless it is a receipt or is a statement being emailed to donors. (Previously all PDF files created by DONATION were encrypted.) This may solve a problem that a few users are having where PDF printing doesn’t work.
- The program now uses a new version of the novaPDF PDF-printing software (version 7.1 instead of version 5.5), which may solve a problem that a few users are having where PDF printing doesn’t work.
- Fixed a bug, where if you logged in to DONATION using the Limited User Password, and you backed up the database, you received an error message after that, and the program exited. (You could start it again after that, and the backup was successful.)
- Now if you are using the Limited User Password, you can no longer use the Database -> Switch Databases menu option. (It could cause complicated problems, that would have been hard to fix, and seems very unlikely to be required by limited users.)
- Fixed a bug where you use Maintenance -> Change Year -> Previous Year, and the default date for new donations stays as the last date used in the year you just switched from, allowing you to save donations with a date in the wrong year. (If you used that menu option several times in a row, you could even end up saving donations with a date several years forward.)
- Made a small fix that may prevent a crash during mail merges that one user was experiencing, with the message “Null object reference at line 3 in function of_focus of object u_web_browser”.
The change to the new novaPDF printer version is the most drastic change in this version, and the one I am most concerned about being tested. (To test it, after installation, just run any report, then use Save PDF and make sure the PDF file gets created and displayed to you.)
As usual, please let me know any testing results, postive or negative, preferably by adding a Comment to this posting.
I’d also like your advice about whether I should inform all users of this new version, or save it up for inclusion with the next version that has more significant feature changes. Of course, I would upload it to the normal web site once I’m sure it is OK, and I would inform any users who are having problems with the PDF printing that they should upgrade to this new version. But I did inform all users of version 3.30 just last month, and I don’t want to overwhelm everyone with too many upgrades. What do you think?
Thank you!