> I'm going to be moving TB to a different computer in the next few > days, & would like simple, step-by-step instructions on what to do > please :-)
I do that from time to time - I think my system is particularly big despite being private mailsystem: In total my system has close to 300 mailfolders containing approx 300 000 messages. My main system is of course at home and this is where I do all the maintenace. I have a mirror backup at my working place - and from time to time I update the rule settings etc. on the mirrored system. This is how I do it: In TB I Backup "Account Properties"; "Address books"; and "Global options". I do NOT use The Bat to backup "Folders with messages" nor "Attachments" (more about that in a moment...). NOTE: Remember to click "Choose" and check for the addressbooks. The Bat sometimes leave your Personal Address book unchecked (!) thus backup will happen for your address book! Next I select the folder where the backup file is to be stored, and I give it a decent name - like TB20020809-1803.tbk (backup of "The Bat"; year "2002"; month "08" (August); date "09" (9th); backup started 1803 (18:03)). Next I check for the accounts I want to back up - in my case I always do a total backup, so I check them all. I give the backup file a password - this is adviceable since your backup file will containg account properties you would like to keep for yourself - my password are always made up of a nice combination of alphanumeric "chArAct3rs". When all that is done I execute the backup - the process won't take many seconds since we at this time isn't including messages. At this stage we have now done a "full" account(s) backup. I made a point that I do not use The Bat to backup my messages. This is partly because TB dosn't really compress well (...or? ;) and WinZIP will do it faster and better in my opinion. Before I zip the _entire_ TB-folder I'll make sure my TB backup is there too (TB20020809-1803.tbk to be found in C:\Programfiles\The Bat!\). I use the same procedure for password and naming the zipped file; ie. "chArAct3rs" and "TB20020809-1806.zip"...and then I'll go for a coffee-break :) Later I burn this entire big zipped file to a CD (NOTE: Remember to test your Zip-file before ack'ing!). After burning to CD, I test to see if all the packed files are well without errors (WinZIP and WinRAR can do this easily). Now that I have the CD finished, I can restore (update) my mail system at work very easily. Since I already have The Bat installed at both places (equal versions!), all I have to do is to do a safe backup of my Sent Mail on the workingplace installation, and then I just extract all files from the CD into The Bat's folder - any old files are overwritten - but who cares! ;) Next I restore from my backed up TB20020809-1803.tbk - and eureka - system is up! NOTE: There are a few things you must make sure in order to be able to do it this easily. 1) The Bat must be installed using an equal path on both systems; C:\Programfiles\The Bat!\ This is important so that you can be _sure_ that your mail- rules will operate correctly and find folders where they were at the other machine. Any difference here may or may not cause your mailrules to stop working correctly - it really depends on how you have configured your systems. For example, mail rules that Moves messages automatically at receiption, may suddenly stop doing that because it looks for C:\Programfiles\The Bat!\ at home, but C:\Programfiles\The Bat\ at work... :/ 2) Make sure the same The Bat version is installed on both systems. Apparently, this is important when overwriting files - including programfiles! :) 3) Sometimes (and in my case) SMTP and POP3 properties may differ on the two machines. Those you may need to give a little tweak in order to work. But there is a workaround here to: Use XRay to set up correct properties for both machines, and set the properties in The Bat (both systems) to 127.0.0.1. Regardless of which system (backup/restore) your TB will just point to that locally installed XRay - and XRay will route correctly anyway. 4) ...is there more..? ...if there is I will let you know when I remember it... ;) Hope this method works for you. / St ________________________________________________________ Current version is 1.61 | "Using TBUDL" information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html