Backing Up Your Data

The Essential Forms installer generates a backup when the Judicial Council update is run every January and July. Those backups are stored in the Release Backups folder inside the Data folder. We have a manual option built-in to Essential Forms to generate backups. If you set up automatic backup software make sure the entire Essential Forms Data folder gets backed up.

We recommend that you develop a routine to back up your Essential Forms data in order to prevent the loss of your client files if you should experience a hard-drive crash. We have provided a simple utility to accomplish this task. This utility will back up all the data you’ve created in Essential Forms, including the client database and saved forms.

Here is how:

1. Click on File on the top menu bar and then select Backup Data from the pull-down menu.

2. You will see the following dialog box pop up, asking you to insert the backup media. After you have inserted the media (portable hard drive, USB thumb drive, etc.), or if you are saving your backup directly to your hard drive or a network drive or cloud folder, click Continue.

3. Next you will see a pop-up (shown below left) asking to select your backup drive. Select the appropriate drive, click Continue, browse to the folder on that drive where you want your backup to be saved (shown below right) and click OK.

4. When the data backup is finished, Essential Forms will display a pop-up window indicating that the backup was successful. Click OK to return to the program.

TIP: You can also use the backup feature to move your entire client database to another computer. Just be aware that it will overwrite any existing Essential Forms data on that other computer.