Sooner or later you will be getting a new computer, and you will be faced with the task of migrating what was on your previous machine to your new machine. This page describes what you will need to do in order to transfer Recollector, and your collection data, to your new machine.

In some cases, you - or the computer store, or a hired tech specialist - will have been able to move or clone your old computer's hard disk to the new computer. In that case, you probably won't need to do anything, and you can begin using Recollector on the new machine, and pick up right where you left off. In that case, there is no need to read on.

In most cases, however, you will need to take some steps in order to get Recollector - along with your collection data - set up and running on your new machine. There are two parts to this:

• Installing the program (Recollector) on the new computer, and putting in the program's license key.
• Copying your collection data (the collection file and the associated image files) to the new computer.

Part I - Installing Recollector on the new machine

You can install Recollector on your new machine in the same way you would install it for the first time: Go to the Download page of the Recollector web site, and download the appropriate version (for PC or for Mac) of the installation program. Follow the instructions on the Download page as to how to complete the installation.

When you initially run the newly-installed version, it will start up in Demo Mode. You need to supply the program's license key to get it into fully-licensed mode. You should use the same license key that was used on your old computer. There are several ways to find your old license key:

• If your old computer is still running, and you can run Recollector there, start up Recollector and choose About Recollector / Product Registration from the Help menu (on the PC version), or About Recollector from the Recollector menu (on the Mac version). On the window that comes up, the license key (a 16-character key) will be shown.
• If you have the original email message that was sent to you with the key, you can try to find that message and write down the license key found there. To help search for the email, the message's title was Recollector License Key.
• If you copied down the license key, for safe-keeping, when you originally installed and licensed Recollector, retrieve the key from there.
• If none of the prior methods is available to you, contact MapRecord Publications (help@maprecord.com), and we will look up your license key (based on your name and location) in our customer database and send it on to you.

Once you have your license key, enter it into the program on your new computer, using About Recollector / Product Registration from the Help menu (on the PC version), or About Recollector from the Recollector menu (on the Mac version).

Part II - Copying your collection data (the collection file and the associated image files) to the new computer

If your collection data (XML collection file and Image Directory folder) had previously been stored in the cloud, using a file sharing service (such as Dropbox, OneDrive or iCloud), then you should not need to copy anything. You can use Open from the File menu to navigate to the cloud location, and select, the collection file (which has a file-type of XML) for your collection, and you should be up-and-running. The rest of this section describes what you need to do if this is not the case, and you need to make an actual copy from the old computer to the new one.

You copy your collection data from the old computer to the new one by using Recollector's Backup and Copy features. The backup facility makes a complete backup of your collection data (text data, images, and supporting files). That backup is in the form of a folder containing some files and sub-folders. You get to choose where to put this backup folder, and for the purpose of transferring your collection to a different computer, you will want to put the backup folder either on a USB drive (such as a thumb drive), or on some cloud-based file-sharing service (like Dropbox, OneDrive or iCloud) that is accessible by both your old and new computers.

If your old computer is still running, create a backup by choosing Backup Collection from the File menu. In the window that comes up, specify where the backup should be placed (the parent directory of the backup folder that will be created by the backup operation). This is likely to be either the top-level folder on a USB thumb drive that is plugged into your computer, or some folder in the cloud-based file-sharing service that you use. Also, be sure that the option to Back up the collection file and all the image/audio/video/associated files is selected.

If your old computer has died, then, we hope, you had been in the practice of periodically making backups of your collection, and you can use the most recent of those backups to transfer your collection. If you made additions or changes to your collection since the last backup, you will have to make those changes again on the new computer, after restoring your collection from backup, but, in most cases, that is not a large amount of work.

What about the case where your old computer died, you did not make Recollector backups, and you did not use a file-sharing service to store your collection data? In this case, things get harder. If your computer used some overall backup system, then it may be possible to restore the individual files and folders that constituted your collection data. But you will need to know where your collection data was stored, and this can vary from user to user. MapRecord Publications (help@maprecord.com) is available to provide some advice in this case, but be aware that in some cases, such as a hard disk failure on a system that never used backups, your collection database may be lost. This underlines the importance of making backups, so if you are reading this now, and you haven't been making backups, and your current computer hasn't failed, please start making periodic backups (onto removable media, such as USB drives, or into the cloud) to avoid future disasters.

The next step is to copy your collection from the backup onto your new computer. If your Recollector backup is stored on a USB thumb drive, insert that thumb drive on the new computer. Choose Restore or Copy a Collection from Backup on Recollector's File menu. This brings up the following window:

First, click the Choose Backup Folder button, then, in the dialog that comes up, navigate to and choose the backup folder. The backup folder will have a name that looks like this: MyCollection_17MAY2022_11_30, where the first part of the folder name will reflect the name of your collection, and the rest of the folder name shows the date and time when the backup was made. Knowing that Recollector backup folders have names that look like this can make it easier to find and recognize the backup folder (and to choose the most recent backup folder when you have multiple backups saved).

Secondly, in the lower part of the dialog, switch the choice from Restore to Copy. Then specify where the copied collection database should be placed. Here there is a small difference between the PC and Mac versions:

• On the PC version, you specify the location and the name for the copied collection file. So the specified name might look like this:
     C:\Users\Smith\Documents\SaltShakerCollection.xml
  This allows you to specify a name for the collection file that might be different from the name that the collection file had on the old computer. In most cases, though, you will probably choose to use the same file name you previously used. You can also use the file-selection dialog's ability to create a new folder to use for your Recollector data. Many PC users choose to make a C:\Recollector folder and use that as the storage location for their collection databases.
• On the Mac version, you specify the location of the folder where the copied collection file will be placed. Though it may be located in a differently-named folder, the copied collection file will have the same name that it had on the old computer. You can also, if you wish, use the Finder-like file-selection window to create a new folder for the location of your copied collection data. For example, you could create a new folder named Recollector as a sub-folder of your Desktop folder.

Note that if, on the new computer, you want to start using a file-sharing service for the location of your collection database (even though on the old computer you stored the database on your local hard drive), you can do this by simply navigating to and choosing a clould-based location when you are choosing the location for your copied collection. (You must have read/write access to whatever cloud-based location you select. If you don't, Recollector will warn you and ask you to choose a different location.)

Here is an example of what the Restore or Copy window might look like after you have filled it in and are ready to start the actual copy operation:

On the Mac version the location specified at the bottom will just be the folder name, and will not include the XML file name. So it might be something simply like: /Users/jerem/Desktop/Collections

Once the dialog is filled in, click the Copy button (on the PC) or the OK button (on the Mac) and the copy operation will be performed. When the copy is complete, a window will be displayed informing you of the location of your new collection file, and you will be given the option of opening the collection.

Additional Notes

• If you have multiple collections, you need to perform this same set of Backup and Copy operations for each of your collections.
• If your collection contains images, the Copy operation will result in all of your image files being gathered together in a newly created Image Directory folder that accompanies the new XML collection file. If, in your original collection on the old computer, images were referenced in a variety of different folders, rather than together in a single Image Directory folder, the images will still all be included in the backup, and they will all be present in the copied collection, but they may be in a different location (relative to the collection file) than where they were on your old computer.
• If your old machine was a PC and your new one is a Mac (or vice versa), you can still use these instructions. Your Recollector database, as saved in a backup, is valid across platforms, so you can back up from a PC and copy to a Mac, or the other way round.