Archive overview
The drawers in DT FileCabinet fill up over time with older, unused documents. As the number of folders grows, locating and accessing documents becomes increasingly difficult. The archiving feature in DT FileCabinet provides a method to move the contents of folders and drawers to another location.
You can select specific folders to archive, or choose folders based on a range of dates. During the archive process documents are removed from their respective drawers and replaced by a volume icon.
The application uses the period-end date of the application folder (for documents originating from other DT Professional Suite applications), or the date-specific folders in which they reside to determine if a folder falls within the date range. Date-specific folder names must begin with a date in MM/YYYY or YYYY format to be included in an archive.
You can rename folders (using the proper date format) to make their contents eligible for archiving. Folders that are not date specific can be archived by selecting them in the Folders to Archive dialog.
Examples using date range for archiving
- For an archive date range of 1/1/2018 through 31/12/2018 , the application will archive documents in the 2018 Letters folder.
- For an archive date range of 1/1/2018 through 31/12/2019 , the application will archive documents in both the 2018 Letters and 2019 Letters folders.
- For an archive date range of 01/03/2018 through 31/03/2018 , the application will not archive any Letters folders. (If there had been a folder named 03/2018 Letters, the application would have archived it.)
note
- You can choose the Include explicitly selected folders option to archive all selected folders, including those outside of the selected date range.
- You can view archive information, delete archive information, or restore archived documents. Deleting archived information does not delete the archived documents.
- An archive can consist of documents from any number of drawers. You can store archives on fixed media or on Removable media include data CDs, DVDs, Iomega Zip disks, and USB Flash drives.
- DT FileCabinet uses an automatic locking feature for the archiving process.
What is a volume?
A volume is a collection of one or more archives. Before you determine how many archives a volume should contain, consider the media on which you will store archives and whether you want to organize archives by month, by quarter, or by year.
You can create a new volume with each archive, or you can create a new volume for each full year of archives. You can also choose separate media types for different volumes.
If you store archives on removable media, you should take space limitations into account. To determine the appropriate media type for storage, consider the number of drawers, the number and size of documents, and the date range of the folders you will archive.
Removable media include data CDs, DVDs, Iomega Zip disks, and USB Flash drives.
Consider how you want to organize your archive volumes before storing archives on fixed media, such as network drives. You could add all archives to a single volume (assuming one network drive was large enough), but we recommend that you include only one year of archives in a single volume.
Fixed media include local and network drives.
Where should volumes be located?
By default, archives are located within the DT FileCabinet data location. This allows your firm to point your tape or other disaster-recovery backups exclusively to the DT FileCabinet application folders.
If you are concerned about security or disk space usage, you can store volumes on removable media. If you are accumulating archives prior to storing them on removable media, we suggest that you use a temporary network location outside of the \WINCSI\FCABDATA folder. Use this folder only to store DT FileCabinet archives.