Your database is a live system: you add new contacts, delete them, update with new data. At some point you may want to look back and reinstate those contacts or notes that may have been deleted by accident.
It is very easy to restore the entire database even if your computer or hard drive crashes so long as you recover a backup file or files.
You can backup the database manually from time to time to a safe place. Or better yet, to set the program to auto-backup. Then you can restore the data from those backup files.
To backup program database, select main menu option Database > Backup. It will open the Save File dialog to allow you to choose the location of the file.
E-Z Contact Book stores data in a single database file CONTACTS.DB. When you save data as a backup file, the program creates a copy of this file. For your convenience, it will automatically add current date stamp in the file name, in a format like CONTACTS_YYYYMMDD.DB*.
If you backup the database from time to time, you can later restore the data from these files the same way you import from other sources. Restore from a backup file is easy and does not require extra mapping.
The program has the option to auto-backup the database. Using this option (which is enabled by default), you don't have to do it manually. It automatically saves your contact database in a file with the current date stamp at scheduled intervals (once a day, or week, or month). Default location of these backup files is shell:AppData\E-Z Contact Book\Backup.
This default folder is inaccessible to other Windows users (as well as you contacts database), but you can select any other backup location of your choice. For example, if you choose to keep your backups on another hard drive, a network location or a flash drive, you can quickly restore your contacts even after a crash of the computer or its main hard drive. Backup files created by auto-backup are named as CONTACTS_AUTO_BACKUP_YYYYMMDD.DB*.
*YYYMMDD part of the file name is a date stamp that is automatically added to the file name when you save the database as a backup, to make it easy to keep track of backups chronologically. For example, CONTACT_20130517.DB means it was saved on May 17, 2013.
The program can restore the data only from its own backup files having extension *.DB.
If a file with extension *.DB was created by other software, it is not compatible with E-Z Contact Book data structure, and cannot be restored.
There are two methods to restore from a database backup:
In the following dialog, you should choose how you would like to import (restore) the contacts:
Old data backup may have some differences from your current contact data, so you may need to decide which contacts you want to add or merge. See the chapter how to resolve differences between current data and imported data for more details.
The database file grows when you add new contacts, add more data, delete or update them. These operations over time may leave behind an empty space or "free" database pages. This means the database file might be larger than necessary, which in turn may slow down program operations. Running Cleanup to rebuild the database reclaims the space and reduces the size of the database file.
To cleanup the database, select main menu option Database > Cleanup.