Modified:
Jun 7, 2019
Created:
Oct 26, 2006
Views:
14284
Author:
JH

Backing up & Retrieving your Price Lists and Templates data

Your important ProSelect's setup data (containing your price lists, templates, rooms, music setup, frames etc) is stored on your computer in a single file (called "ProSelect_Data.xml"). Any associated image files are kept in your ProSelect Resources folder.  

This information can be lost by computer crashes, hard disk failures, file corruption etc. and while these situations are not common, it is time-consuming to re-enter, will possibly occur at the most inconvenient time and be a painful lesson when it does happen!

Backing Up

Therefore you should periodically make a backup copy of your ProSelect Data and your ProSelect Resources folder in case this should happen.
 
The following article explains how to do this and where these are located on your computer:

Transferring Prices and Templates to another computer

Auto-backups and "Saving the day"!

If you lose your data and do not have a recent backup, then it is still possible to recover this information from one of ProSelect's Auto-backup copies.

See the "Restoring ProSelect Data from an auto-backup copy" in this KnowledgeBase Article: Clearing Preferences & Resetting/Restoring your Setup Data.

  

About Auto-Backups

ProSelect automatically saves a number of auto-backup copies as follows:

Recent Changes Auto-backups (for the version you are using)

ProSelect automatically keeps a history of up to 4 previous copies of your ProSelect_Data.xml file. These copies are triggered each time you make a change that effects this data (eg changing a price list item or a template) provided it has been more than 5 minutes since the last auto-backup was made.

So, if you are busy doing lots of changes continuously then you can potentially go back to the version that you had up to 20 minutes ago (4 backups x 5 minutes). If you are only making occasional changes then these backups may go back many hours or even days.

These backup copies are called: ProSelect_Data_bk1.xml, ProSelect_Data_bk2.xml, ProSelect_Data_bk3.xml and ProSelect_Data_bk4.xml. 

Each time a new back copy is made the oldest copy (usually ProSelect_Data_bk4.xml) is deleted and the other copies are renamed in sequence. eg ProSelect_Data_bk3.xml becomes ProSelect_Data_bk4.xml etc.

Version Change Auto-backups

As well as this, ProSelect also makes an extra backup copy each time you upgrade to a newer version of ProSelect.

These copies are named ProSelect_Data_XX_YY_ZZ.xml where XX is the release year, YY is the release number and ZZ is the update number. For example, the backup file saved when upgrading from version  2016r1.5 to a newer version would be saved as "ProSelect_Data_16_1_5.xml".

Below is an example of a typical ProSelect setup showing these files.

Choosing which backup copy to use

When deciding which backup copy to use, you should check both the date and size of the files. Obviously, the last modified date should be the most recent one, but a larger file size is likely to mean that it includes more information than the default setup that ProSelect is first installed, or it creates when it can't find your ProSelect_Data.xml file.

IMPORTANT:  If you are not sure which copy you need to recover from, then it is a good idea to make a copy of all of the auto-backup files (i.e. every file starting with ProSelect_Data..) into another location on your computer. This is because when you re-open ProSelect and make any changes, you may trigger another Auto-backup and loose one or more of the earliest backup copies.

Where these copies are saved

On Mac OSX: StartupDisk:Users:YourUserName:Library:Application Support: ProSelect
On Windows Windows 7 & newer: C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\ProSelect

On some computers, access to the above locations is hidden. So if you can't locate these folders, then see the relevant article below for how to do so:

This information is also in the Backup & Sharing section of the ProSelect Reference Manual (quick access under Help menu in ProSelect).

For very early versions of ProSelect, see this article for where the files are saved.  If you are using the ProSelect Network Server then see this article for the location of its saved data backups.

Manually Recovering from an Auto-backup (If NOT using SHARING)

If you are NOT using one of ProSelect Sharing options.

If you are using ProSelect 2017r1 or newer, you can do this from within ProSelect. See "Restoring ProSelect Data from an auto-backup copy" section in this article: Clearing Preferences & Resetting/Restoring your Setup Data.

If using an earlier version then do this:

  1. Make a backup copy of your current setup using ProSelect Data -> Export Data to... (under the File Menu in ProSelect)
  2. Determine which backup file you wish to re-import (see section above how to choose this).
  3. Use ProSelect Data -> Import Data from... (under the File menu in ProSelect) and navigate to the folder and file that you wish to recover from. If you are having trouble getting to the file, then first copy it from the backup location to your desktop then import it from there.
  4. Check that all the information that you need is correct (eg check price lists, templates etc). If not, try importing another backup file.
  5. Close ProSelect to save this file.

RECOVERING from an Auto-backup (If using SHARING)

If you are using one of ProSelect Sharing options.

  1. Make a backup copy of your current setup using ProSelect Data -> Export Data to... (under the File Menu in ProSelect)
  2. Determine which backup file you wish to re-import (see section above how to choose this).
  3. Turn off sharing (in the Preferences).
  4. Use ProSelect Data -> Import Data from... (under the File menu in ProSelect) and navigate to the folder and file that you wish to recover from. If you are having trouble getting to the file, then first copy it from the backup location to your desktop then import it from there.
  5. Check that all the information that you need is correct (eg check price lists, templates etc). If not, try importing another backup file.
  6. Open the Sharing Setup window in the Preferences to turn it back on. In the Sharing Setup window do a "Send to Shared" (if you are using a Shared Folder) or "Send to Server" (if you are using the ProSelect Network Server). This will copy your restored ProSelect_Data.xml file to your shared location.
  7. On each other shared computer, open the Sharing Setup window and do a "Get from Shared" or "Get from Server" to retrieve the new data file from the shared location. When opening the other shared computers, it may say "The ProSelect data in the shared location is Older than your local copy...". in this case, DO NOT do a send to shared otherwise you will overwrite your recently restored file with your bad one.
  8. Close ProSelect on each machine to save the updated copy.

 

KnowledgeBase Article: Backing up & Retrieving your Price Lists and Templates data