Using Multiple Data Files

Sometimes it is necessary for your church software to have more than one data file. For example, if there are two congregations that you oversee, or if you work in the office at one church but attend another church. ChurchTrac allows you to use multiple data files–one for each congregation–and to switch between them easily.

First, close ChurchTrac and rename your existing data file to something like ctdata_church1 (your data file can usually be found in your My Documents\ChurchTrac folder). Now start ChurchTrac 8. Immediately, the program will tell you that it cannot find the data file (after all, you did just rename it). ChurchTrac 8 will offer the option to create a new data file or to browse for an existing file. Choose the option to create a new data file. (Note: Previous versions of ChurchTrac won’t have the option for creating a new data file automatically).

At this point you have two data files in your My Documents\ChurchTrac folder (you might want to go back later and rename the second data file to ctdata_church2). To switch back and forth between your data files, click on the Utilities button, then click Data File under Program Settings. This window has a button that you can click to browse for the data file you want to use. Select a different data file, and ChurchTrac will quickly connect to it.

We don’t recommend that you use this feature to split up the people in one congregation between multiple data files. For one, that would be a violation of the license agreement. Secondly, you’ll never be able to merge the two data files into one data file. And finally, the reports you generate will not be able to include data from the other file, and vice versa. So it is best to only use this for keeping up with multiple congregations that won’t need to be merged in the future.