Oct

9

How To Create Database File Sub-Sets

Filed Under Bento Tips 

Thanks to a very valuable comment from Vince, one of BentoUsers’ reluctant followers, I would like to give you the how-to of archiving sub-sets of your Bento database.
My personal example is the collection of race reports from my daughter’s High School sports career.

Here’s the step by step:

  1. Back up your current (complete) database file
  2. Create your sub-set of Libraries/Collections by deleting unwanted data
  3. Quit Bento and re-start which now automatically creates the finished sub-set
  4. Now, back up this new database file, naming it anything you want which creates the archive
  5. In Bento, revert to the back-up of your main database file
  6. Repeat those steps to create more sub-sets

Possibly you might also want to reduce the size of your main database file by deleting the data you saved in your sub-sets.

Note: in my case, my data sub-set consists of iCal Collections. Since Bento has a two-year limit for displaying iCal events, I also saved the Library Records separately as a .csv file. I hope that will work to trick Bento’s iCal limitation. The future will tell. Any comments appreciated!

Comments

3 Responses to “How To Create Database File Sub-Sets”

  1. Florian on October 10th, 2009 7:12 am

    Update: I revised the instructions today. They had some flaws. It should work fine now.

  2. hunter on February 6th, 2010 9:38 am

    what’s the suggested method for choosing which db subset to open?

  3. Florian on February 6th, 2010 9:50 am

    Hunter,
    you could use the Option-key method, but that whole feature might go away in the future, as TSGal mentioned in the forums.
    Otherwise, Bento will automatically open the same database file that was active when you quit the app. Then you just choose “revert to..” (file menu) to open any of your backups to switch databases.

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