Issue importing records after reinstall

[FLCYucaipa]

Our church has been using PowerChurch (v. 10, on Windows Vista) for a while, but I'm not at all familiar with it. The lady who handles the contribution entries was experiencing a recurring error, beginning about a month ago, and asked me to try to figure it out. I'm running up against a brick wall, so to speak.

I searched for the error, and everything pointed to it being a network timeout issue, despite the files not being on a network. After some trial and error, I determined that the previous person had, somehow, set up the program to run from a CD, with the files being saved to a USB (I hadn't thought to look for this; I didn't even think it was possible with most programs). I installed PowerChurch on the hard drive, and this took care of the error immediately.

Unfortunately, there was now no data at all. I've tried restoring the data from the USB drive, and everything looks like it works properly, but still no data. I've also tried exporting reports from another computer (the one in question is only used for entering contributions and running these reports) and importing them to the contribution computer, but, still nothing.

How do I,then, go about restoring the data? (Please don't tell me everything will need to be reentered.)

Sorry if this is not the best forum for this question, but I've never even heard of PowerChurch before being asked to help out, and didn't see a better one for this issue.

[NeilZ]

Our church has been using PowerChurch (v. 10, on Windows Vista) for a while, but I'm not at all familiar with it. The lady who handles the contribution entries was experiencing a recurring error, beginning about a month ago, and asked me to try to figure it out. I'm running up against a brick wall, so to speak.

I searched for the error, and everything pointed to it being a network timeout issue, despite the files not being on a network. After some trial and error, I determined that the previous person had, somehow, set up the program to run from a CD, with the files being saved to a USB (I hadn't thought to look for this; I didn't even think it was possible with most programs). I installed PowerChurch on the hard drive, and this took care of the error immediately.

Unfortunately, there was now no data at all. I've tried restoring the data from the USB drive, and everything looks like it works properly, but still no data. I've also tried exporting reports from another computer (the one in question is only used for entering contributions and running these reports) and importing them to the contribution computer, but, still nothing.

How do I,then, go about restoring the data? (Please don't tell me everything will need to be reentered.)

Sorry if this is not the best forum for this question, but I've never even heard of PowerChurch before being asked to help out, and didn't see a better one for this issue.

If you still have access to the original setup, do a POWERCHURCH backup using the backup utility in the program. Save that to USB, then go to the new install, and restore the back up file.

You have to realize something, that without the Membership and Contributions database being backed up and restored, you don't have the link between the givers and the data.