Backup, export and transfer
Your data is files on your disk: this makes it easy to save and move, but it also means that backup is your responsibility.
The program already includes trash, snapshots and history, which cover mistakes made while working. This page is about the other risk: a disk that breaks and a folder that gets deleted.
The simplest method: copying the folder
Copy the working folder (the one chosen on first run) to a USB stick or an external drive. Everything is inside: records, transcriptions and attachments.
To put the archive on another computer, install ArchiView and point it to that folder as its working folder.
TIP
Make a copy before every bulk operation (changes to many records, change of document type, restoring an earlier version). It takes a few seconds and it is the most effective safety net available.
Backup in a single file: the ZIP archive
ArchiView generates in one click a ZIP file containing the whole archive, database and attachments. It is easy to keep, to date (archive-2026-09.zip) and to send to a colleague.
The import feature reloads a ZIP archive produced this way.
Exporting to use the data elsewhere
Besides backup, you can extract data to work on it with other tools:
- a spreadsheet: CSV or Excel;
- an article or a thesis: transcriptions in HTML, Markdown, RTF;
- a reference manager: BibTeX or RIS;
- paper or PDF: printing.
How often?
| Situation | Recommended frequency |
|---|---|
| Daily work on a local archive | Copy of the folder once a week |
| Before an operation on many records | Always, right before |
| Archive connected to a remote one | Synchronisation is already a copy, but a periodic local copy is still useful |
| End of a project | Dated ZIP, kept in two different places |
The survival rule
A backup kept only on the same computer as the data is not a backup: if the disk breaks, both are lost together. Keep at least one copy elsewhere: an external drive, another computer, a cloud service of your choice.