How do you backup and restore only changed/new files

[laura tarbutton]

We have PC 9 and the secretary enters new members at her computer. I work with the adult ministry and make changes to my files ie new contact numbers, birthdays etc. When she brings me a backup file with the new members, her data overwrites my data. How can I preserve my data while adding the new members?

[NeilZ]

We have PC 9 and the secretary enters new members at her computer. I work with the adult ministry and make changes to my files ie new contact numbers, birthdays etc. When she brings me a backup file with the new members, her data overwrites my data. How can I preserve my data while adding the new members?

FWIW ... you can't, as the membership database files are all interrelated in many ways. If you have a network in the church, you should setup a 'client/server' type of Powerchurch setup where the one database is shared between all users: Membership, Contributions and Accounting. In this way you won't have these synchronization errors.

If you can't network the files, what you may need to do is to have the Secretary do the updates on one day, a backup taken then restored to your computer; you do your updates, then you backup and restore that data to the secretaries machine.

As you can see, having Powerchurch networked will make it much easier.

[laura tarbutton]

Thanks for the information, we are not networked and the secretary does not have time to do the updates I have. I will have to find another program or way.

God Bless

[tborgal]

To network your two computers together may be the easiest and cheapest solution to your problem. It is no longer very expensive or difficult to do, especially if you are running XP on both machines. If you have anyone in your church that has some computer knowledge I,m sure they could help with the networking.

[DebbieR]

Before we got our network, everytime I did anything with PowerChurch, I then backed it up and updated the secretary's machine with my material. Our rule: do anything, backup and share. Now that we are networked, we don't backup as often as we should, which we are working to correct this year.