a5wAH0fAOr36jyacfA8pyY

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New Member

02/09/10 10:48am PST
Viewed by asker 03/28/12 4:31am PDT

Solution for a lot of DMS problems

I have solution to a lot of the problems listed in this forum, and I discovered it after losing everything in an update one year!!!

Every user of DMS must export DMS data to a folder. The EXPORT feature in DMS is the greatest treasure hidden in the program that is little used.

Create a folder on your computer, example, lets call it "DMSx" or whatever you please. Go into DMS. File Export..-A folder on my computer...select the DMSx folder using browse feature ...select all clients......And presto!!!!!

One problem will be password protected files, but you can Skip "cancel" these, or have all passwords handy.

You will have a folder (DMSx) on your computer that contains all your DMS files, in an easy to access file structure. All your PDF files ect will be there.

This structure should help those who are experiencing a slow down with large DMS file. You could use this folder as Prior files and start a new DMS, or start a new DMS file, switching back and forth from old to new within DMS.

If DMS structure ever gets corrupted for some unknown reason, you have a structure that can be used. it can be Imported back into DMS.

osutaxman

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15 Replies

TeresaBirns

New Member

08/12/10 3:13pm PDT

Hmmmm. When I export a file out of DMS is seems to be saved as a "regular" file and not an encrypted file. Encryption is my primary reason for using DMS. That's also the reason the files cannot normally be accessed using windows explorer.

Just make sure you are keeping your data safe.

-best regards -tb

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osutaxman

New Member

08/20/10 6:17am PDT

Teresa ...just wait for the day that Lacerte sends an update which crashes DMS and you are unable to run DMS or get to your encrypted data (which is only accessible from Lacerte DMS).....the export is useable without going through DMS..

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WellbornCPA

New Member

01/07/11 10:38am PST

If you backed up your data every night, wouldn't you be able to restore your database from there if it got corrupted?

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osutaxman

New Member

01/07/11 11:27am PST

Maybe..

But try this example...and it's exactly what happened to us one year...New Lacerte update for DMS....forced to update so we did...Lets' say that there was a problem with Lacerte that was detected right away....backup would then be updated unworking DMS....Lacerte told us to run repair, but the repair program wasn't available because the update was so new...old repair wouldn't work....How do you feel when you start thinking about the"time" wasted building the DMS data......I prefer to export every so often

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LacerteGuru

Employee

01/07/11 11:31am PST

Did you know you could use drag and drop to do it as well? If you highlight all your clients, you can simply "drag" them over to a windows folder and drop. Bam! export done!

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osutaxman

New Member

01/07/11 11:34am PST

Client by client ??????

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LacerteGuru

Employee

01/07/11 11:35am PST

Highlight all first

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jenhorton

Contributor

01/31/11 9:18am PST

NO ONE wants to loose their data. We backup manually, we use Ghost backup in our pc's nightly, and we have an offsight backup nightly as well. You can NEVER have too many backups when it comes to the information we are all working with. Thanks for the tip on the export! *smile*

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G2GTech

New Member

02/11/11 3:31pm PST

I second this backup strategy. I would like to add that anytime you are forced to update Lacerte Tax or Lacerte DMS; you should perform the following:

1. Automatic or Manual backup of the existing database in case you have to go backwards in time and restore the original working database

2. Manual or automatic backup of the current Lacerte Tax or Lacerte DMS folder sitting on the server or workstation.

3. In the case of server installs, if have run into situations where the database got corrupted and no one could access it. running a restore solved that problem. but when the DMS program on the server gets corrupted due to an update. Its nice to be able to just restore the DMS program folder and be right back where I started.

Our Lacerte runs on a Windows 2003 R2 server. Its backup nightly by BackupExec to tape and external hard drive. Backup data is encrypted and then mirrored to an online backup service. You could also mirror your data to another office if needed or you are worried about online backup.

If you do these two simple things, you can almost always go backwards if something goes wrong. The problem with these forced updates is that users generally click "OK" to perform the update of their program and database and then they get stuck and have to call tech support.

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waytogoidaho

Contributor

10/19/11 8:49pm PDT

The ease of this "solution" illustrates the security flaw in the DMS system pointed out in my separate post titled DMS Security Flaw - Can I get some help?

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FredKCPA

Contributor

12/06/11 8:16am PST

Our client database is over 3,000 so the drag&drop feature as well as the export feature is very time-consuming. I thought maybe the Modified Date in the Export would be my answer as we could then just "update" our backup based upon some point when last modified; however, the Modified Date appears to only be when the Folder itself was created, not when a modification occurred in the folder. Is there a way to do backupsof the PDF's (not the Hieroglyphics you get with the backup to another database) to another folder for each client based upon only changes to the client's folders that occurred in the last X number of days or since the last backup. I also tried the Find documents to do this task but you get just documents not the folders & it would be very time consuming to take each changed document pdf & put it in the backup pdf folders. Any suggestions?

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osutaxman

New Member

12/06/11 8:50am PST

The drag and Drop feature is basically worthless if you have more than a few clients.

We do the complete backup (weekly) to an external backup, under a folder named by the date of the backup.

This is best solution that we have found. I know that the backup takes some time, but it's computer time, when I doing something else, at another computer.

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Taxguy21

Contributor

02/01/12 12:56pm PST

Ok, can you restore an individual doc this way? Suppose someone loses an excel spreadsheet stored there. Is it possible to be this granular in restoration? I could not see how do to do this. We had to export the whole thing to be able to do this.

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waytogoidaho

Contributor

02/01/12 1:19pm PST

Yes just drag the file that is outside of DMS back into DMS where ever you want it placed.

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KellyWolf

New Member

02/22/12 4:29pm PST