Archiving Old Records

If your database has many donors who haven't given for a few years, and you would like to "archive" these donors, or move them to a different database, you can follow the steps below. You can change the donor status field from active to inactive and use the criteria for SmartLists, Reports and Mailings without having two databases. If you still decide that you want to separate donor databases, you will have to create a duplicate file to create the archive file. First, back up you current database from the Home Page or the Settings section.

1. Start GiftWorks and go to the Settings section.
2. Click on Manage your Database. At the bottom of the screen, the name and location of your database (.gds) file is listed. Make a note of the name and location.
3. Close down GiftWorks.
4. Go to My Computer and click through to the location of your database file. Then, click Edit - Copy and Edit - Paste to create a copy of the file. You should then have .gds and
5. Rename the "Copy of" file to "-archive.gds". This will be your Archive file. (Now is a good time to rename your original database to "-current.gds".)
6. Start GiftWorks again. You will sign in to your existing database, which will now be the "Current" database. You shouldn't need to change anything to sign in to this database.
7. If you want to rename this database to "-current", you can do this through Settings - Manage your database - Rename the Database. Note that this doesn't change the file name, just the name that is displayed (in the title bar of GiftWorks, for example).
8. Next, make a SmartList of the Individuals (and one of the Organizations, if appropriate) that you want to delete from your "Current" database. To do so, go to SmartLists, click on Create a New SmartList, choose "Individuals" or "Organizations" and then set up the criteria that define who you want to delete. One possibility is "Most recent donation date is before ", perhaps 1/1/03. This would give you all of the people who haven't given since that date. How you want to divide up the data is ultimately up to you.
9. Once you've created the SmartList(s) that you want to remove from the "Current" database, go to the Settings section, then to Manage Deleted Records, then to Delete SmartList Contents. From there, you can choose the SmartLists(s) you just created and delete the contents thereof. The "Current" database should now contain the correct records.
10. Click File-Sign Out.
11. Now, open GiftWorks again, on the Sign In screen, click Choose a different database, then Select a different database, and browse to and select the "Archive" database you created in step 5, above. Sign into that database.
12. Now, make a SmartList of the Individuals (and one of the Organizations, if appropriate) that you want to delete from your "Archive" database. These SmartLists will likely be the mirror images of the ones you created in step 8, above (i.e. Show all, with a Don't Show criteria of the donors you selected before).
13. Once you've created the SmartList(s) that you want to remove from the "Archive" database, go to the Settings section, then to Manage Deleted Records, then to Delete SmartList Contents. From there, you can choose the SmartLists(s) you just created and delete the contents thereof. The "Archive" database should now contain the correct records.

To switch back and forth between the databases, you will need to Sign out and then use Choose a different database each time. Note that there is not a way to move someone between the two databases, so if someone in the Archive database makes a donation, you will need to manually add them to the Current database. Similarly, if someone goes "inactive" from your active list, you will need to add them manually to the inactive database.