Difference between revisions of "Backup"

Revision as of 07:19, 11 May 2018

A:It depends.

If you're using the XML (default) backend, GnuCash makes local backups for you every time it saves your file. It does this by renaming the previous version of the file with a date-time-stamp and a new .gnucash suffix. For example, if your data file is named MyAccounts.gnucash, one of the backups might be named MyAccounts.gnucash.20140131150812.gnucash.
If you're using the SQLite3 backend you should use a timed backup program to copy your account file in some way.
If you're using either the MySQL or Postgresql backend, you should perform backups on the database in accordance with the recommended best practices appropriate to the server. We're not competent to advise you about this beyond recommending that you make backups.
We strongly recommend that whatever backup plan you use includes a provision for offsite backups. A good option is one of the many internet storage facilities like DropBox, Google Drive, or Carbonite. Those are just popular examples; there are dozens of such services, and we can make no recommendation of one over another.

There is a free 3rd party tool for creating GnuCash backups called BackupGnuCash. See http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Published_tools.

Restoring is simply a matter of removing the defective MyAccounts.gnucash and renaming one of the backup files to that, then starting Gnucash or using File>MyAccounts or File>Open and selecting MyAccounts.gnucash from the File Chooser.
To restore from an off-disk backup, just copy MyAccounts.gnucash back into the directory where the original is.