Backup and Restore Database Documents

In this video, we’re going to look at backup and restore with Tap Forms 5 on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

So I’m in my database document My Forms. This has all of these different forms here. When we create a backup, what Tap Forms 5 does is it backs up the entire database document. So it’s going to backup all of these forms here, my Tutorials, my Lessons, my Team. It’s also going to back up my Home Inventory, my Albums, my Movies. It backs up the entire database document.

So when does it do this backup? Well we can do it manually, and then we can also have it set to do it every time we quit Tap Forms 5.

To back it up manually, all you need to do is just go up under File in the menu bar, and then you’re going to see Back Up. I select this and from here I select where I want to back it up to. I’m going to go to my Desktop here. I click on Backup, and now it just backed up that database document. If I were to hide this we can see we have my backup here. So that’s how we do it manually.

What about automatically? How can I set it up to make sure that Tap Forms 5 is backing up every time I quit out of Tap Forms 5, which is what I would recommend. Well we go back into our Tap Forms 5 here, and then what we need to do is go to our Preferences. So I go up under the menu bar Tap Forms 5 and we go over to Preferences. From here where we need to make sure that we’re looking at General. And under general, you’re going to see Back Up on Quit. We want to make sure that this is selected. When this is selected, what we’re able to do is set how many backups it’s going to create. So it can keep 30 backups. I can set where it’s going to back them up to. It’s going to go to my Backups folder. And then I can also see the latest backups. If I want to open up this backups folder here, all I need to do is just click on Show Files. It opens up the Finder to my Backups folder. I can also click on Back Up here to back it up manually.

Now what about restoring? How do I restore a backup? Well, the steps to restore a backup depends on if you are syncing or not. If you are not syncing your database, which means it’s only on your Mac, it’s really pretty simple. I’m going to click on Done here. I have my backup here. I want to restore this. To restore it, all we need to do is go back into Tap Forms 5. We go up under File in the menu bar, and then you’re going to see Restore. From here, I select which file I want to restore. I’m looking at my Desktop here. I want to restore this file here. I just double click on this and it will restore that file.

Well what about restoring a database document that you are syncing? Well, that gets a little more complicated. The reason is if you’re syncing and you’re restore your backup file, when the sync happens again, whatever was in your database document that was deleted, it will be deleted again. So you’re going to get conflicts. So how do you get around this? Well, basically what you have to do is you have to turn syncing off on all of your different devices. Tap Forms has a nice little outline of what you need to do to restore a database document if you are syncing, there’s about 14 steps. So instead of outlining those 14 different steps here in this video, I thought, well, it would be better is if I provided that link in my notes below. This way you can get it straight from Tap Forms on how this whole thing works. You can follow that step-by-step. So if you’re syncing your database document, and you need to restore that database document that you’re syncing, click on the link below and follow those steps from Tap Forms.

So that’s how we back up and restore our Tap Forms 5 database documents on the Mac. We open up our database document. If we want to back it up, we just go up under File and select Backup. Select where we want to back it up to and Tap Forms 5 will create a backup. It’s going to create a backup of that entire database document that you have open, all of the forms within that database document. We can also set Tap Forms five to back it up automatically. When we quit out of Tap Forms 5, I would recommend that you leave this on to make sure that it is backing up. When you quit, you go to your Tap Forms 5 Preferences, go to the General tab and you’ll see all the settings for automatic backup. To restore a backup, all you have to do is just open up Tap Forms 5, go up under File and select Restore.

So that’s how we back up and restore our Tap Forms 5 database documents on the Mac.