Pre-August 2005 Restore Procedures:

This is a step by step guide to RESTORING your Safelog Logbook data from a backup you made previously.

We took a lot of time doing this guide, so please read it carefully! Every step matters.

You may note that there are a lot of steps: well, yes and no. The procedure outlined in Safelog is self evident to the vast, VAST majority of Safelog users who successfully do back-ing up and restoring regularly without this guide. For the most part, the steps below illustrate common windows operations that every computer user should be more or less aware of in this day and age, as it is more or less basic stuff. Please understand that while we are the programmers and you are the users, it is not wholly unreasonable for us to expect our users to have some reasonable familiarity with computer usage. Nevertheless, the below can be a bit remedial at times. We hope you find it useful nevertheless.

We note that there's always the possibility that, despite your having followed the steps below carefully, you may be having problems with your backup and/or restore operation. If you use this guide and things still don't work for you, please feel free to contact us via our helpdesk. However, please note that such support may entail an additional technical support charge.

In most cases, if you have a computer-savvy friend to help you, they can help you with backup / restore issues more quickly than we can, since a lot of it involves things that are obvious when sitting in front of your local PC, but not so obvious to us via the helpdesk. Why not contact them?

Some notes:

• All of the user data for Safelog (with the exception of certain photos) are backed up / stored in a single file.
• The Backup / Restore functionality is seperate from the Import / Export functionality in Safelog. Do not confuse or intermix the two.

This guide shows how to restore logbook data that has been stored in the My Documents folder of the local PC. You will need to modify this procedure if you have stored the data elsewhere.

Remember always: disc space is cheap. Your time is expensive. Make backups early and often and whenever there is any doubt, make multiple backups.

Ok.. to restore your data:

1. Make sure Safelog is not running. Reboot your computer if you are not sure.
2. Double click on "My Documents" on your computer's desktop [See an example of how to do this]
3. Locate your backup file. [See Image of an example backup file located in the My Documents folder]
4. Right click on the file and select "copy" [See Image of an example of how to do this]
5. Close the "my documents" window, return to the desktop, and double click on "my computer" [See example image]
6. Double click on the letter of the drive where Safelog is installed. For most people, this will be "C." [See example image]
7. Locate the "Program Files" folder of the drive you selected in the previous step. Double click to open the Program Files Folder. If windows gives you some security warnings here, you will need to click as necessary to get past them. [See example image]
8. Locate the Safelog folder under "Program Files." This will typically be "SafelogFAA" for USA customers and "SafelogUK" for CAA/JAA customers. Double click to enter the folder. The steps to follow refer to Safelog FAA as example. Of course, your folder may be different [See example image]
9. At this stage we want to check something in your computer settings. While this is not necessary for most people, because some people have some trouble here we're going to check it anwyay.

   Click on "Tools ... Folder Options" at the top of the screen. This will bring up a window. Click on the "view" tab of that window, scroll down until you see a choice that says "Hide Extensions of Known File Types" (the wording of this may differ in different windows version). Make sure that this is NOT checked / selected. Un-check it if it is checked, and then click on "apply / ok." If it is already un-checked, just click on "ok." [See example image Part 1] [See example image Part 2]

10. Return to the SafelogFAA folder window that you were just in (this happens automatically after you click on OK or APPLY). Find some white area (usually towards the bottom or right). Right click and select "Paste." This will result in your backup file being copied from your My Documents folder to this folder. [See example image]. However, we're not done yet!
11. There's a chance that if you copied from CD-ROM, your file's properties are set incorrectly, which could adversely affect program operation. To check for this, do the following. Right click on the filename as shown in this picture, and select "properties". This will being up the "properties" window. Check to make sure that "read-only" and "hidden" are NOT checked, and then click ok / apply (example). Important: after doing this, RE-CHECK to make sure that "read-only" and "hidden" are not selected. Windows has a nasty habit of sometimes not un-setting this. If this happens to you, you will need to seek technical support from somewhere else, as it is beyond our scope of support for safelog, as this is more of a system thing that you need to take care of somehow.
12. After successfully copying / pasting the file, your folder will look something like this [See example image] . You didn't skip the previous step, did you?
13. Now let's shift our attention. The current issue is that there's already an "active" logbook file (called mylogbook.dat) associated with Safelog. We're going to now first rename the current one to some filename ("mylogbook_backup2.dat" in this case, but you can choose any name) and then rename the file we just copied to mylogbook.dat. Once we have renamed the file we just copied to "mylogbook.dat", the process is complete. The following steps will show this in more detail.
14. Locate the current active logbook file. It is called "mylogbook.dat" and it is in that same folder. [example]
15. We're going to rename this file to get it out of the way. Right click on it and select "rename" [example]. Then, type in a replacement filename. We've chosen "mylogbook_backup2.dat" here, but you can choose any name you want. [example] Hit enter after you are finished typing to solidify the change. If you get an error here, it's probably because Safelog is still running.
16. Now let's rename the file that you copied earlier to "mylogbook.dat". It MUST be named "mylogbook.dat" and exactly "mylogbook.dat". Nothing else will do.
17. Find the previously copied over file, right click on it, and select "rename." [example]
18. Rename it to "mylogbook.dat" [example]
19. Your folder should now look like this. Hooray!
20. Close the window, and start Safelog. It should now have your restored data.

If you get errors upon starting Safelog:

• Double check that you have followed all of the steps above
• Ask your computer savvy friends to have a look
• Contact us via the helpdesk (an additional support charge may apply as this is beyond normal technical support). While we apprecaite that you may be frustrated now, do take the time to explain in detail exactly what is going wrong and what error messages you are receiving. We may ask you to email us your backup file.

Good luck!