Backup of User-Customizable Options in MARC Report

The first time you run MARC Report, the following folder structure is created in your My Documents area:

If you make use of the Option Profiles feature, all of your option profiles are saved in the 'profiles' folder. The 'templates' folder contains all of your MARC record templates (or the default templates installed with the program).

Every other file that can be customized is saved in the 'options' folder. This includes cataloging options such as Cataloging Check sets, Cancelled Message sets, Mandatory field sets, Local Subject sets, etc., as well as options files that are used by the utilities, notably MARC Review (saved reviews) and MARC Global (saved reviews and autoreviews).

Up until the current version, a copy would be made of the contents of the three folders mentioned above whenever the program would close. This backup copy was placed in a folder named 2.xx-backup within the 'options' folder itself:

In version 235, several changes were made to improve how this backup works, and your control over it.

First, you can now turn off this backup in MARC Report altogether. To do this, go to the Program Automation tab of the options and uncheck the box labelled 'Backup options folder when program closes'. (This option is enabled by default).

Second, you can now change the destination of the backup folder. Click on the edit box labelled 'Backup folder' (also on the Program Automation tab), and select the folder you would like the backup directed to.

Third, we've made a few improvements to how the backup itself works. In the past, the program would simply make a copy of the files listed above whenever it closed. In version 235, the program will:

1. Make sure there's a complete copy of your files in the backup folder, then
2. Backup only the files that have changed, and
3. Keep up to five copies of each file, but
4. Make no more than one backup of any given file per day

This regimen should greatly improve your chances of reverting to a previous set of options, something that wasn't really possible in earlier versions of MARC Report.

Notes about MARC Report Backup

The program will make a backup copy only of those files that are less than 50K in size, with the exception of the two 'savedreviews' files, which can be a bit bigger than 50K for power users. The reason for this filesize check is to prevent the program from copying a large MARC file that might have inadvertently been dropped into the Options folder .

As noted above, the backup destination is a folder named something like '2.33-backup', where '2.33' is the current version of the program. If you look at your Options folder you may see a number of these '-backup' sub-folders from previous versions. The reason for splitting the backup by version number is that sometimes the format of the option files change from one version to the next. You can delete these older version folders once you have switched to a new version and feel comfortable that there all of your options have been carried over.

The number of backup copies is limited to 5 copies, at which point the backup starts in at #1 again. This should give enough redundancy to make it possible to restore an option file after an accident, without creating an infinite number of backups.

Note that backing up over a network may result in a slight pause when you close the program (one or two seconds would be normal; but it may be more on a congested network). If your personal folder is being stored on a server somewhere, this might explain why MARC Report doesn't 'just quit when I tell it to'.

Note that setting your own backup foldername will circumvent the default behavior of backing up each version's options to a separate folder.