Tech Tips #2

From the Desk of Ted Stevens, CEO

To properly backup your survey while working on it, do a Print Preview first! If the survey print preview is up on the screen, you don’t even have to read it or look at it.  The very fact that it got all the way through the preview process and displayed the cover sheet, means it can be restored to that exact stage of the report if you had an issue going forward.  So, click the round red X (at the top of the screen) and go back to the working screen of the survey and click Close, or even click the Open icon.  Force5 will ask you if you want to back up the survey, say YES, but only if you just had a good Print Preview!

If your Print Preview was good and you backed up to the suggested backup folder on your PC, then you can restore the survey to that stage very simply by using the Restore button in the “Survey Management“ utility window in a matter of seconds.   This can be a big help in the middle of the night when you’ve lost power, or Windows did an update and you get a message that your survey has been damaged.  Believe me, it doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.  It is so easy to go back to a last good saved survey backup and start from there.  Yeah, you might lose an hour or so of work that you did since you last backed up, but you won’t have to start over.  And since you just did that last hour of work, you will duplicate it faster than you think.  Sure, you pay us for support, but if it is after business working hours (or a weekend) you may not get us on the line as fast as you would like.   So controlling your own restore of good surveys just makes good sense!  Of course, if you can’t restore it, or you have not backed it up correctly, then call us and we will probably be able to help you get at least most of it back for you.  There are some built in features that help us save your surveys, even in bad circumstances, but you can’t count on it… We are good, but sometimes there is still no way.

Quick Summary of Tip: Print Preview before you close your survey.  If successful, choose to back up to your backup folder.  If not successful, DO NOT backup over your last good backup.  If you can’t do a successful Print Preview, or if you are not sure of what you are doing, then please look at our Video Tutorial on “Backup a survey file” and “Restore a survey file”.  Backing up your entire Force5 folder is possible using the “Backup All” feature.  Check out the Video Tutorial named  “Backup All and Restore All”.  Use an external hard drive (or even a USB flash drive) to back up and store data off of your computer.  Remember, you can lose all your surveys, templates and everything if your hard drive fails. Your external hard drive may be your life raft.

Questions?  Call our office at (772) 334-8555 or (800) 373-6030 and ask for Ted or Kyle.

Force5 is owned and operated by an expert computer network certified company www.computernetworkservices.biz