* Backing Up Ancestral Sources (AS)

[David2416]

May I draw attention to this paragraph in the AS help File:

Settings Folder: You can specify the folder where the Ancestral Sources settings files are stored. Auto-text templates, associated person types, census templates and links between places and countries are saved in XML files in this location.
Log file Folder: Log files are created when changes are made to family history GEDCOM files. The folder where these files will be stored can be specified here. See the View Log Files topic.
Backup Folder: When changes are saved to the family history GEDCOM file a backup copy is saved to the folder specified here. By default only the most recent 10 backups are retained. This number can be changed. If set to 0 then all backups are retained.

It is highly recommended that you include all 3 of the above folders in your regular hard-drive backups to external media.

I hadn't been doing this so failed to have backups of some of my modified templates. I had been relying on the menu options in AS to Backup and Restore Settings. Learning the hard way I realise that that does not cover everything

I had copied the folders a while ago so was able to retrieve some of my modifications, having unintentionally overwriting some of the Settings folder.

So I mention this for the benefit of those who may not be aware of the above.

[NickWalker]

By default it saves to your documents folder and so if you're backing up your documents folder (as most people would!) then these get backed up too of course.

[David2416]

Fair enough, unfortunately I had inadvertently moved it out of the Documents folder when setting up One Drive! Mea culpa. It's back there now.

[NickWalker]

Thanks for reminding people about this. I have it in my documents which is also in One Drive and that has the advantage of syncing the templates across all my computers and also allows me to easily revert back to earlier versions using OneDrive's version history facility. I hugely recommend OneDrive to everyone - it works so well and the 1TB storage is very cheap - £50 a year for my family (via offers on Amazon at various times of the year for the Microsoft 365 Family licence), around £40 for just a single user I think and you get the added bonus of Microsoft Office too!