REVISION HISTORY AND BUGS / FEATURES > Revision History 2007 to 2010

Fixes in Version 3.33d (December 23, 2010):

•In the Database ⇒ Import Donations menu option, added checkbox options to adjust the dates in the file to be imported to all be in either the current month or the previous month. That way, if you are using this to import recurring monthly donations, you don't have to edit the file and adjust the dates each time.

•Allow dollar signs in the amount fields you are importing with Database ⇒ Import Donations.

Fixes in Version 3.33c (December 21, 2010):

•Fixed a bug introduced by version 3.33b, where using the Email/Print button to email a built-in receipt or statement report would cause an error message (although the email actually worked).

Fixes in Version 3.33b (December 20, 2010):

•You can now double-click on backup files (for example DONATION4.DB.GBK) or emailed backup files (for example DONATION4.DB.S4B), and if DONATION isn't open, DONATION will start and you will be prompted to restore that backup.

•Completely replaced the features of the Save As button on the report-viewing window. It now brings up a new window with clearer choices, and some new options like displaying your saved file in an appropriate program (such as Excel) after saving it, and sending it by email to someone.

•Added information in the Network Versions of DONATION help page, explaining how they can also be used over the Internet (for example with the Network Server version of DONATION on a computer in your office, and the Network Client version at home).

•Added a new help page on Multiple User Options for DONATION, listing three options: multiple Standalone or Lite installs (copying the database around), Network Versions, or remote access.

•Added a question if you use Receipt ⇒ All Donors prior to the year-end, asking whether you really want to do that, since usually that menu option is only used once per year (if at all), after the year end. The same is done with Receipt ⇒ Filtered Donors, if the only filter criterion is on the donation amount. (Other filtered receipt options might reasonably be used prior to the year-end, for special campaigns.)

•If you close a receipt-viewing window that is displaying newly created receipts, without printing, emailing or saving the receipt(s) to a PDF file, previously the program would ask you whether you wanted to save the receipts to the database anyways. This is no longer asked, and the receipts are now never saved to the database in this case. (Answering Yes to save the receipts to the database was almost always an error, and caused many tech support problems!)

•Made a small improvement in the installation programs, when you are upgrading an existing installation. Previously, if you had manually updated your desktop icon for DONATION to have a shortcut key to start it, whenever you upgraded that shortcut key would get lost. Now it is retained.

Fixes in Version 3.33 (December 6, 2010):

•Moved the One Date reports, previously under Reports ⇒ Donation, to a new sub-menu, Reports ⇒ One Date Donation.

•Added two new reports under Reports ⇒ One Date Donation: Details and Summary, and Details with Member/Envelope # and Summary. Each combine the respective Details report with the summary by category part of the Summary report, on one page if they both fit. (The three previously existing individual Details or Summary reports are also all still available.)

•In Reports ⇒ One Date Donation ⇒ Details and Details with Member/Envelope #, added a "Switch to Summary Report" button at the bottom. In Reports ⇒ One Date Donation ⇒ Summary, added a "Switch to Details Report" button at the bottom. These buttons switch between these sets of reports. ("Switch to Details Report" switches to Details with Member/Envelope # if you have selected to show the Member/Envelope # field in the Donor Details tab of the Maintenance ⇒ Main Window Options window, and to just Details if you are not showing the Member/Envelope # field.)

•Added a new report, Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ All Donations ⇒ Sort by Amount.

•Fixed a bug in the Standalone version full installation program (doninst.exe) that in very unusual circumstances would give an incorrect error message that you were trying to upgrade from a version prior to version 2.30, and not let you continue the installation.

•Fixed a bug where you are backing up to a USB memory key that has insufficient free disk space to hold the backup, and it says the backup was successful, but in fact it wasn't. (Fortunately given the capacity of USB memory keys, and the usually very small size of DONATION database backups, this would have been a very unusual occurrence!)

Fixes in Version 3.32b (November 4, 2010):

•Fixed a problem in Help ⇒ Check for Updates, that seemed to only happen on Windows 7 (or perhaps only on 64-bit computers, or both). After it prompted that it needed to exit the program before starting a downloaded update installer, you would get an error message saying that it could not start the installer. Unfortunately, this fix may only take effect on the upgrade after this one, because the fix is in the program, not the installer, and thus you need to have a fixed program before the problem goes away!

Fixes in Version 3.32 (November 3, 2010):

•Added a menu option, Help ⇒ Move DONATION to Another Computer, which takes you to the help topic Move the Program from One Computer to Another. (This is the most common technical support question we receive!)

•Added the menu option Backup/Restore ⇒ Restore Non-Backup Database, for the unusual case when you need to restore an actual copy of the database file (usually named DONATION4.DB) rather than a database backup (usually name DONATION4.DB.GBK).

•If you have multiple databases (created with the Database ⇒ Switch Databases menu option), after you create any backup it will remind you that you need to back up your other database(s) independently, by switching to them and backing them up. (A backup only backs up the database you are currently in.)

•In the Help page on Using a Logo and Signature Bitmap on your Receipts, added a section on how to get inexpensive help editing your logo and signature bitmaps, if you are not able to do so yourself.

•Added a trick in the Email Sending Configuration windows: if you set the SMTP Sever in the 2nd window to "NONE" (without the quotes) and click OK, then when you go back that menu option again, it will take you back to the 1st window, for the program to infer your settings from either your default email program or your email address.

•Fixed a bug in the Database ⇒ Import Donors menu option, where if the file to be imported contains quoted fields that are the maximum field length (for example 30-character First or Last Name fields), the names would be truncated because the quotes were being counted as part of the length.

•Fixed issues in both the Database ⇒ Import Donors menu option and the Database ⇒ Import Donations menu option, where if you had saved the file to be imported from Excel, and Excel was still open, those windows could fail to open the import file.

•Fixed a bug where if the First or Last Name fields were filled in to their maximum length (30), and contained accented characters, the Donor List would stop loading correctly on subsequent runs of DONATION, with an error message.

•Fixed something more fully, that was supposed to be fixed in version 3.31 but the fix only sometimes worked: In some versions of Windows, some PDF printing of reports and built-in receipts may not work unless you run DONATION as an Administrator. If a PDF print fails, you may be given a message to exit DONATION and re-run it as an Administrator, to resolve this problem.

•Fixed a bug when using the Email/Print button in receipts, where it could give you an erroneous error message that it couldn't create the Report.pdf file, even though it actually created the Receipt.pdf file it was supposed to create successfully. (It still sent the email with the correct Receipt.pdf file attached successfully, despite the error message.)

Fixes in Version 3.31c (September 1, 2010):

•Fixed a bug in the installation program for the Network Server version, that caused it to fail to install an empty database on a first installation, as a result of which you could not use the program after the install.

Fixes in Version 3.31b (August 28, 2010):

•Fixed a bug that was occurring to a few users of DONATION who were using Windows XP, where trying to run the program caused their computer to reboot.

•In the Network Server version of DONATION only, added the Tools ⇒ Network Client Information menu option, which displays the information needed to successfully install the Network Client version of DONATION on other computers in your network.

Fixes in Version 3.31 (August 5, 2010):

•Changed the saving to PDF files so that it doesn't encrypt/protect the PDF file from modification unless it is a receipt or is a statement being emailed to donors. (Previously all PDF files created by DONATION were encrypted.) This may solve a problem that a few users are having where PDF printing doesn't work.

•The program now uses a new version of the novaPDF PDF-printing software (version 7.1 instead of version 5.5), which also may solve a problem that a few users are having where PDF printing doesn't work.

•In some versions of Windows, some PDF printing of reports and built-in receipts may not work unless you run DONATION as an Administrator. If a PDF print fails, you may be given a message to exit DONATION and re-run it as an Administrator, to resolve this problem. Another option (that does not require running DONATION as an Administrator) is to select to Print the report or receipt(s), selecting the "novaPDF v7 for DONATION" printer to print to.

•Fixed a bug, where if you logged in to DONATION using the Limited User Password, and you backed up the database, you received an error message after that, and the program exited. (You could start it again after that, and the backup was successful.)

•Now if you are using the Limited User Password, you can no longer use the Database ⇒ Switch Databases menu option. (It could cause complicated problems, that would have been hard to fix, and seems very unlikely to be required by limited users.)

•Made a small fix that may prevent a crash during mail merges that one user was experiencing, with the message "Null object reference at line 3 in function of_focus of object u_web_browser".

•Fixed a bug where you use Maintenance ⇒ Change Year ⇒ Previous Year, and the default date for new donations stays as the last date used in the year you just switched from, allowing you to save donations with a date in the wrong year. (If you used that menu option several times in a row, you could even end up saving donations with a date several years forward.)

•Fixed a bug where if you selected Save As from the window displaying a report, and it couldn't save to the specified directory or filename, it didn't tell you that the save failed. Now it does.

•Fixed a bug where if you selected Save PDF from a window display a report or a mail-merge letter, and it can't save to the specified directory or filename, various confusing error messages could occur, and the program could hang for a while or crash. Now simpler error messages are used.

Fixes in Version 3.30c (June 22, 2010):

•Fixed a bug (which was worked around, but not prevented, in version 3.30b) where an initial install of the program on a computer can start you out working on the year 0, instead of the current year (such as 2010).

Fixes in Version 3.30b (June 21, 2010):

•Fixed a problem in Help ⇒ Check for Updates, that seemed to only happen on Windows 7 (or perhaps only on 64-bit computers, or both). After it prompted that it needed to exit the program before starting a downloaded update installer, it would exit the program, but never start the installer. Unfortunately, this fix may only take effect on the upgrade after this one, because the fix is in the program, not the installer, and thus you need to have a fixed program before the problem goes away!

•For users of the Network Client version of DONATION, if the database on the Network Server version's computer can't be opened, because the Network Client thinks it is in a location that is not correct, give the user an option to correct that location.

•Fixed a bug where Limited Users could use the Report Browser, and thus see all reports and all data in the program. Also, prevent Limited Users from using the new Tools menu, which is not a security issue per se, but they just don't need those functions.

•Handled a bug where during your first program startup, you can end up with the year set to 0 (rather than the current year, for example 2010) and the program allows you to enter data for the year 0. Now the program will exit if it observes that the year has been set to 0, and should prompt you normally for your startup information the next time you start it.

Fixes in Version 3.30 (June 10, 2010):

Changes directly or indirectly related to no longer needing to run DONATION as a Windows Administrator:

•Made a lot of small changes to allow the program to not require being run with Windows Administrator privileges on Windows Vista, Windows 7 or other versions of Windows with Microsoft's User Account Control feature in them. This saves on having to click on a User Account Control "Allow" button to allow it to run, every time you start it, and better conforms to Microsoft guidelines for applications. (It also no longer requires being run as an Administrator on Windows XP.)

•Moved a lot of data files from various places under the standard installation folder (usually C:\Program Files\Donation) to a new data directory that is not under C:\Program Files (where non-Administrator programs may not modify files).

•The program now stores it settings in various different places. (They used to almost all be in the Local Machine registry, which non-Administrator programs man not modify.) Many settings, such as those in Maintenance ⇒ Main Window Options, are now stored in the database, which means they go with it when the database is backed up from one computer and restored on another. It also means that if you have two databases for two organizations, they can have independent settings on that window.

Other improvements and bug fixes:

•All "statement" reports and mail merges can now be sent by email to donors who have email addresses, just like the receipts. This includes Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ Details, One Page per Donor and Category Totals, One Page per Donor, and Total Donations information mail merges. See Statements and Receipts and Emailing Receipts and Statements for details.

•The program is now much more flexible about the names and locations of logo and signature bitmap files for your receipts and letters, allowing you to select them on a window you reach from the Maintenance ⇒ Receipt Options window, and allowing them to have any name and standard bitmap filename extension (for example BMP, GIF or JPG). Also, you can specify different logo and signature bitmaps for different organizations/databases, if you have multiple databases on the same computer.

•You can now edit the list of Paid By values for the Cheque # / Paid By field's drop-down list for the Donations, by using a new Maintenance ⇒ Donation Paid By Values menu option.

•In the windows for Letters ⇒ One Letter and Letters ⇒ Mass Mailing, removed the final sections for specifying whether or not to use a standard save pathname for the merged file, and for specifying an alternate save pathname if you aren't using the standard one, and for editing a previously saved merged file. Those sections were just confusing and not particularly useful. Now the standard save pathname (the letter file name with "_save" added before the ".htm" extension) is always used.

•Also in the mail merge windows, added a new OutstandingAmount field to the Donor Information and Total Donations Information merge options, which is filled in with the donor's annual Pledge amount (or 0, if there is no pledge) minus the Total Amount donated.

•Created a new Tools menu, with new options Explore Data Directory (which opens a Windows Explorer window in the new data directory) and View Saved Settings (which displays all settings saved by the program, and where they are stored).

•Moved the Help ⇒ Register by Email menu option to the new Tools menu.

•Made a number of small improvements to the installation program. In particular, if the program has been copied to a new computer (instead of installed there properly, as explained in the Help topic Move the Program from One Computer to Another), it now offers an option to delete and recreate the license file if the current license key is out of date, which previously would have prevented the install from completing.

•Fixed a small typo in the French and bilingual receipts: "d'enterprise" was corrected to be "d'entreprise".

•Renamed Help ⇒ DONATION on the Web to Help ⇒ Software4Nonprofits Web Site, for clarity.

•Changed the installation program to always write a log file C:\Windows\DONATIONSetupLog.txt, which can be used to diagnose any problems that come up during an installation.

•Fixed a bug in Reports ⇒ Custom Report, where if you picked Sum(Total Amount) or Sum(Eligible Amount), or both, and also at least one of the Receipt fields, it generated incorrect SQL that gave an error message when you tried to run it.

•Added a new Help topic, Pledges in DONATION, to explain various aspects and limitations of using pledges in the program.

•Fixed a bug in Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ Details, One Page per Donor, where donations that had longish Descriptions could have part of those descriptions cut off at the right.

•Fixed a small bug in the three Maintenance menu options for editing donor and donation categories, where it would allow you to save a category description consisting only of one or more spaces.

Fixes in Version 3.23j (April 2, 2010):

•Fixed a bug in that affected a few users of mail-merge letters, where the merge field «Today» displayed as "January 1, 1900" in the merged letters. (This only happened if in Control Panel's Regional and Language Options, in the Date tab of the Customize window, your Short date format had a different order of elements from your Long date format. For instance, if your Short date format was "dd/MM/yy", and your Long date format was "MMMM d, yyyy".)

Fixes in Version 3.23i (March 21, 2010):

•Fixed a bug in Reports ⇒ Donor ⇒ Envelopes and Reports ⇒ Receipt ⇒ Envelopes, where if you chose the option to include a logo on the envelopes, the logo was displayed with the wrong dimensions (it was squished horizontally to about 1/2 of the correct width).

Fixes in Version 3.23h (March 19, 2010):

•Fixed a tiny problem in Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ Receipted, where the total of the Amount column, at the bottom of the report, didn't quite line up properly with the figures above it in the Amount column.

•Fixed a problem introduced by version 3.23, where in the editor for mail-merge letters and receipts, the Actions ⇒ Edit in Microsoft Word menu option and toolbar button did not always work reliably. (Word would come up, but the file you were editing in the mail merge editor might not appear in it.)

Fixes in Version 3.23g (February 23, 2010):

•Fixed a problem when using the built-in receipts for Quebec (French-only or bilingual) where if you selected either "Details only, no Summary" or "Summary only, no Details" in the Maintenance ⇒ Receipt Options window, a blank page would often be printed after each receipt. Also, this change allows for more individual donations in the Details section, or categories with donations in the Summary section, before the receipt will go onto a 2nd page.

•Made two corrections to the French in the built-in and mail-merge receipts for Quebec (French-only or Bilingual): "N° de reçu" instead of "N° de série", and "N° de l'enveloppe" instead of "N° de enveloppe". (The first of these changes only needed to be made in the mail-merge receipts, it was already that way in the built-in ones.) Note: To get these changes to the mail-merge receipts, you either have to make them yourself (the best choice if you have already edited them), or if you have never edited them, delete the receipt files receipts_merge_bilingual.htm, receipts_merge_bilingual_simple.htm, receipts_gik_merge_bilingual.htm, receipts_merge_french.htm, receipts_merge_french_simple.htm, and receipts_gik_merge_french.htm before upgrading to this version. Those letters files are found in the letters folder under the DONATION installation folder, generally C:\Program Files\Donation\Letters.

•Made some small corrections to the documentation for the Database ⇒ Import All Data menu option.

•Fixed a bug where if you have a huge screen resolution (bigger than 1280x800), and you maximize the DONATION window, Member/Envelope Numbers, or part of them, can appear at the right in the Donor List.

Fixes in Version 3.23f (February 19, 2010):

•When you use the Help ⇒ Check for Updates window, if you have used it before for the same version but for some reason not completed the installation successfully, it will now notice that the installation file has been downloaded before, and give you an option to just use that file, rather than downloading it again.

•Fixed a bug introduced in version 3.23, where Reports ⇒ Category ⇒ Donor Category 1 and Donor Category 2 cause the program to crash.

•In the Lite version of the program, if you changed the Organization Name in the Maintenance ⇒ Organization Info window, you were getting an inappropriate message about needing to update your license key after that change. Removed that message, because the Lite version doesn't need license keys.

Fixes in Version 3.23e (February 15, 2010):

•In the Database ⇒ Import Donors window, changed the name of the Member/Envelope # field from being displayed as "Member Number" to the clearer "Member/Env. #". Also fixed a bug, where if that field was imported, and it was later in the list of fields to be imported than the "Addr2 (Merge 2 Fields)" or "Addr3 (Merge 2 Fields)" field, the import would fail with inappropriate error messages.

•Fixed a bug in the Help ⇒ Register by Email menu option, where if you had no Address Line 3 or no Phone in the Maintenance ⇒ Organization Info window, either sending the registration would result in an error message, or it would be sent, but it would be empty.

•Fixed another bug in that same menu option, where if you were a Lite version user, or a paid version user who registered before setting up their email sending configuration with Maintenance ⇒ Email Sending Configuration, it would say that you would receive an immediate automated acknowledgement of your registration, but you never received that.

•The default directory for the first backup you ever do with the program was changed again (further to the change in version 3.23d), from the Cooperstock Software\Donation subdirectory of the Windows All Users Application Data directory, to the same subdirectory of the Windows All Users Documents directory. (This should only be relevant for users who have never made a backup on the current computer before, and in any case, the backup can be changed to be in any desired drive or directory.) This is better than the directory used in version 3.23d, because that was a hidden directory by default.

Fixes in Version 3.23d (February 11, 2010):

•When entering new donations (or editing existing ones), you now cannot enter an Eligible Amount that is the same as the Total Amount. If all of a donation is eligible for a tax deduction, you should only enter its amount in the Total Amount field, when both of the Amount fields are displayed.

•Fixed a couple of small bugs in Database ⇒ Import Donors. First, when importing either the "Name: First Last" or the "Name: Last,First" fields, if there is no data for that field, the First Name field would end up looking empty, but not really be empty, so if you tried editing that Donor record, you would get a confusing message saying "If you are entering either a last or a first name, please enter both of them." (If you get this bug, fill in both name fields with anything, Save the donor, then remove those name field entries, and Save it again.) The second bug was that if you were using the "Addr2 (Merge 2 Fields)" or "Addr3 (Merge 2 Fields)" fields, and only one of those two fields to be merged was filled in, the resulting merged address field would be empty, rather than containing the one field it should have contained.

•The default directory for the first backup you ever do with the program was changed, from the Cooperstock Software\Donation subdirectory of the current logged-in Windows user's Windows Application Data directory, to the same subdirectory of the Windows All Users Application Data directory. (This should only be relevant for users who have never made a backup on the current computer before, and in any case, the backup can be changed to be in any desired drive or directory.)

Fixes in Version 3.23c (February 10, 2010):

•Allowed more options for marking a donor or donation as Non-Receiptable: if either donor category or the donation category is exactly "Non-Receiptable", or starts with "NR ", or ends with " NR" (abbreviations for "Non-Receiptable"), that donor or donation respectively will be Non-Receiptable, i.e. will never be included in an official receipt created with the Receipt menu options. This change to allow donation categories to mark donations as Non-Receiptable allows you to still use the Cheque # / Paid By field normally. (Previously you had to select the value "Non-Receiptable" or "Pre-Receiptable" in that field to mark an individual donation as Non-Receiptable.)

•In the editing windows for the donor and donation categories, added a display-only field "Receiptable" beside each Category name, to show whether or not that category is Receiptable or Non-Receiptable. It shows a check mark for Receiptable, or an "X" for Non-Receiptable. This is based on them being Non-Receiptable if they contain exactly "Non-Receiptable", or start with "NR ", or end with " NR".

•Simplified the process for the Backup/Restore ⇒ Restore Old Database menu option, in the case where DONATION version 2.70b or earlier was never installed on the same computer, and thus the database software required to restore an old database (filename DONATION3.DB) is not present. Before, it prompted you to go to the DOWNLOAD page on the DONATION web site to download and install a required file, to make this action possible. Now, it downloads that file for you (and it is a new, smaller file, only 3MB), and runs the install for you.

Fixes in Version 3.23b (February 5, 2010):

•Made a number of smallish fixes to the Reports ⇒ Custom Report window, the largest of which is allowing you to force the report to prompt for a single donation date, a range of donation dates, or a range of donation dates and optionally a donation category.

•Connected to that, in Database ⇒ SQL Select (which is used by Reports ⇒ Custom Report to display the report), provided for various arguments for prompting for a single donation date, a range of donation dates, or a range of donation dates and optionally a donation category before displaying the report.

•Fixed a bug in the Help ⇒ Register by Email window, where if there was no email address stored in the program yet, it wouldn't allow editing of that field, so the registration would be sent with a blank email address. Also, validate that the email address field has been filled in with a valid email address.

Fixes in Version 3.23 (January 29, 2010):

•Put a fix into the installation program, which seems to fix a problem some users with 64-bit computers and Windows Vista or Windows 7 were having, where running reports or receipts could crash DONATION, and a reboot of their computer was required to fix it.

•When viewing receipts created with mail merge, the editor now has a File ⇒ Email/Print menu option and corresponding toolbar button, allowing you to email those receipts to those donors who have email addresses, and optionally print the rest. (The was previously only available for the built-in receipts, not the mail merge ones.)

•Moved all backup and restore menu options from the Database menu to a new Backup/Restore menu, because the Database menu was getting too crowded!

•Added a new Database ⇒ Split Donor menu option, for making a duplicate of a donor record, in order to spit it (for example into separate records for spouses).

•Reorganized the Maintenance ⇒ Receipt Options window into more logical groupings, and made it disable fields that are not relevant if you have selected to use mail merge receipts. Also, added buttons for editing the template file for mail merge receipts, and mail merge gift in kind receipts, if you are using mail merge receipts. (This saves having to go to Letters ⇒ One Letter to do that.)

•Changed Database ⇒ Delete Old Data so that it prompts for the last year of data to be deleted, rather than always deleting up to the 3rd-last year of data in the database.

•In the editor for mail-merge letters and receipts, added a menu option and toolbar button for inserting an HTML non-breaking space.

•In that same editor, show the Actions menu option for Edit in Microsoft Word only if Word is installed. Added further Actions menu options and toolbar buttons for Edit in Dreamweaver, Edit in Microsoft Expression Web, and Edit in Microsoft FrontPage (all of which are HTML editors), which appear only if their respective programs are installed.

•In that same editor, if you edit the document with an external editor using any of the Actions menu options and make changes in that external editor, then when you return to the internal editor in DONATION, you will be prompted to reload the document to see the changes.

•Added a Help button in the window prompting for a range of receipt numbers for the Receipt ⇒ Reprint Range menu option. Also added a Help button in the window prompting for a range of receipt numbers when you are in Letters ⇒ Mass Mailing, you select the Receipt Information option, and click the Merge button.

•Improved some of the messages that come up if you try to create receipts but there are no unreceipted donations, to clarify that you can reprint those receipts with the Receipt ⇒ Reprint Range menu option.

•In the Evaluation version of the paid versions of DONATION (i.e. before you get your license key), it used to be that the Receipt menu options other than Current Donor Sample were disabled (greyed out) so you could not use them, because that is the limitation of the Evaluation version. Now, the options are enabled, but if you try to use them, they give a message explaining that they are not available until you pay and are licensed. Current Donor Sample still works, as before. This does not apply to the Lite version, which does not require licenses, but has other limitations on which Receipt menu options are available.

•Added some details to the help topic on Validating your Database on how to fix things, in the extremely unlikely event of a validation error. Also, in that event, the program will prompt you to read that help topic.

Fixes in Version 3.22f (January 7, 2010):

•Fixed a bug introduced by version 3.22c, where license key requests for organizations with accented characters in their name would mess up those characters.

•Don't allow Canadian organizations (including Quebec) or Australian DGR organizations, as specified on the "Receipt Style For" drop-down list on the Maintenance ⇒ Receipt Options window, to issue official receipts with the Receipt menu options unless they have filled in the Charitable Number (ABN for Australian DGR organizations) in the appropriate field in the Maintenance ⇒ Organization Info window.

Fixes in Version 3.22e (January 6, 2010):

•Made two corrections to the French in the built-in and mail-merge receipts for Quebec (French-only or Bilingual): "Agence du revenu du Canada" instead of "l'Agence du revenu du Canada", and "Sommaire par catégorie" instead of "Reléve par catégorie". Note: To get these changes to the mail-merge receipts, you either have to make them yourself (the best choice if you have already edited them), or if you have never edited them, delete the receipt files receipts_merge_bilingual.htm, receipts_merge_bilingual_simple.htm, receipts_gik_merge_bilingual.htm, receipts_merge_french.htm, receipts_merge_french_simple.htm, and receipts_gik_merge_french.htm before upgrading to this version. Those letters files are found in the letters folder under the DONATION installation folder, generally C:\Program Files\Donation\Letters.

Fixes in Version 3.22d (January 5, 2010):

•Made a number of enhancements to the Database ⇒ Import Donors window, including adding the fields "Name: First Last" and "Name: Last, First", which allow you to import the First Name and Last Name fields into DONATION from one merged field in the input file, and the fields "Addr2 (Merge 2 Fields)" and "Addr3 (Merge 2s Fields)", which allow you to merge two fields in the input file (containing the city and the state/province) into one Address field in DONATION. Also, double-clicking on a field in the Donor Fields or Fields to Import list transfers that field from one list to the other. And settings in the window (for example selected fields, filename to import) are saved and restored between uses of this window.

Fixes in Version 3.22c (January 2, 2010):

•Fixed a bug where Lite version users couldn't use the new menu option Help ⇒ Register by Email, because they couldn't use the menu option Maintenance ⇒ Email Sending Configuration. Now, users (of any version) don't have to do that configuration before registering by email, though it will still use that configuration if it's available. Otherwise, it uses an email sending form, that sends using a form on the DONATION web site.

Fixes in Version 3.22b (December 22, 2009):

•Fixed a bug that allowed DONATION to be run on Windows Vista or Windows 7 as a non-Administrator user in some unusual cases, which could cause problems. Added a Help page on Running as an Administrator, to explain the issues about this.

Fixes in Version 3.22 (December 19, 2009):

•Renamed the File ⇒ One Date Donation Entry menu option to One Date Batch Entry, for clarity. (It is mostly used for entering a church collection or offering, when there are many donations on one date, more quickly.)

•Whenever you move to a new donor on the main window, for example by navigating in the Donor List, an "empty" line (with just the default Date, Category and optionally Cheque # / Paid By filled in) is now automatically displayed in the Donation details area for that donor. This means you no longer have to click a button (previously New (F2)) to enter a new donation on the main window - you can just click into that empty line and change the date if necessary, enter the amount, etc.

•Because of the previous change, removed the New (F2) button above the donation details area, since it is not needed for entering new donations.

•Where the New (F2) button used to be, there is a new button, Batch Entry, that does the same thing as File ⇒ One Date Batch Entry. (It was added here to make the presence of that option more obvious, because it seems that many churches weren't finding this option, which can greatly speed up their weekly data entry.)

•Removed the New sub-menu of the File menu, which had options Donor (F3) and Donation (F2). Instead, there are two new options directly on the File menu: New Donor (F3), and Edit New Donation (F2). Using the 2nd of those options, or pressing F2, just moves the cursor into the empty row for a new donation for the current donor. (Using this is not required, but speeds things up for those who prefer using the keyboard to the mouse.)

•On the Donations tab of the Maintenance ⇒ Main Window Options window, added two new options. The first, Sort Order, lets you pick between Oldest to Newest (the only option in previous versions), and Newest to Oldest. Oldest to Newest means that earlier donations are higher up in the list, and the new empty donation that is automatically added is at the bottom of the list. Newest to Oldest means that later donations are higher up in the list, and the new empty donation is at the top. The second new option, Cursor Field after F2, lets you pick between Date and Amount. This determines which donation field the cursor moves to when you press the F2 key. (Previous versions always went to the Date field, but that could waste time if you were entering a number of donations for the same date on the main window, since once you set the date on the first donation, it would stay set.)

•Added the menu option Help ⇒ Register by Email, which gives another way to get onto the program's mailing list (required before paying, requesting a license key or requesting an evaluation extension). You can also do that by using the registration form on the program's web site. This method uses information from the Organization Info window, though, and so saves some retyping.

•When you create mailing labels, the reports window that displays them has an additional button, Margins, for adjusting the print margins, in case they are not quite lined up correctly on your printer.

•For Lite version users, the window that comes up when you encounter a feature that is not supported in that version now includes another button, to display the Help for the current feature that you were trying to use that is not supported. This can help you understand what you are missing.

•Removed the option of importing dBase files from the Database ⇒ Import Donors window, since pretty much nobody is using dBase files these days.

•The installation programs now prompt you to reboot your computer after installing on 64-bit computers running Windows Vista or Windows 7, because it seems that if you don't do that, running reports or receipts after the install can cause DONATION to crash. (Some other systems may also encounter this problem, but it doesn't seem consistent enough that the installation program should force a reboot.)

Fixes in Version 3.21b (December 6, 2009):

•Don't allow the program to run if it has somehow been upgraded with a version that was created after the support and upgrades expiry date in the license key file. (Normally there should be no way for this to happen, but it can happen if you switch to the Lite version then back to the full paid version.)

Fixes in Version 3.21 (December 4, 2009):

•This version was created with a new version of the development environment used to create DONATION, which is called PowerBuilder. It was previously created with PowerBuilder version 10.2; now it is version 11.5. This may resolve some problems where some users with Windows Vista found that creating reports would crash the program. (This is usually easily fixed by Restarting their computer.)

•There is now a free Lite version of DONATION available, with more limited features.

•Added the Email field to the fields that can be merged into mail-merge letters and receipts.

•In the One Date Donation Entry window, used by churches for quick entry of a Sunday (or other day) collection, the Enter key no longer does a Save. Instead, if you are in the Amount column, it moves down to the next donor's Amount column.

•In the Database ⇒ Import Donations menu option, you can now optionally import the Eligible Amount and Description fields, which previously could not be imported. Also, this window now saves and restores the settings you used in it the last time it was used.

•In Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ One Date Details with Member / Envelope #, there are now two checksums at the bottom: "Checksum of Unique Member / Envelope #s" (which was there before, just called "Member / Envelope # Checksum") and the new "Checksum of Member / Envelope #s, including splits". This allows for different churches doing their checksum in two different ways.

•When you are editing the Donation Date field on the main window, pressing the "T" key on your keyboard changes it to the current date, as long as that is in the current year you are working on. (This is similar to a feature in Quicken, QuickBooks and perhaps other accounting programs.)

•The installation program now checks whether the DONATION program itself is running during the install, and prompts to be allowed to close it. (The install cannot be completed successfully, without a reboot of your computer, if DONATION is running at the same time.)

•Both Reports ⇒ Donor ⇒ Envelopes and Reports ⇒ Receipt ⇒ Envelopes now include a reversed_name_upper_case field invisibly on the reports. They have always been implicitly sorted on that field, and now they can also be filtered on that, for example to resume printing if a print job of labels stops part way through. If they stopped after, say, "Dan Cooperstock", the filter expression to resume after that label would be:
reversed_name_upper_case > "COOPERSTOCK, DAN"

•When you send an email to a donor, by right-clicking on their email address in the Donor Details area of the main window and picking Send Email from the popup window, there used to be a limit of 1,000 characters in the body of that email, which is less than one page of text. That has been increased to 20,000 characters, which should be sufficient for any reasonable usage!

•Fixed a bug, where right-clicking on the Description column in the Donations area on the main window would bring up the popup menu with the Edit Appraiser option, even when the "Dropdown arrow on the Description Field, for editing the Appraiser" checkbox on the Donations tab of the Maintenance ⇒ Main Window Options window was not checked. (That popup should only appear on a right click when that checkbox is checked.)

•The program now doesn't allow entering a donation on the main window that is set to be a Gift in Kind, but has no Description.

•Fixed a tiny bug that only occurred in Windows 7, where in the mail merge letter editor, the drop-down lists for the font name and font size would sort of blink.

•Fixed a bug where the Email/Print button was visible in the report-viewing window when you created a report with either Reports ⇒ Custom Report or Database ⇒ SQL Select, when it shouldn't have been visible, and it crashed the program if you used it. Currently that button should only be visible for receipts.

Fixes in Version 3.20b (October 4, 2009):

•Fixed a bug introduced in version 3.20: when viewing reports created with either Reports ⇒ Custom Report or Database ⇒ SQL Select, the Filter button was disabled. (It is now enabled in those cases, as it should be.)

•When using the menu option Maintenance ⇒ Email Sending Configuration, and using its first window to configure an @yahoo.com email address based on the standard settings for it, the program now asks the user whether it's OK to use those settings, because they require the purchase of a paid Yahoo Mail Plus account. (Note: As of 2016, this appears to no longer be a requirement.)

Fixes in Version 3.20 (September 30, 2009):

•Split up the Maintenance ⇒ Main Window Options window to have three tabs: Donor Details, Donations, and Limited Users, to make room for more options in each category.

•On the Donor Details tab of that window, added options for default values of Address Line 2, Address Line 3, and Postal Code in new donors. On the Donations tab, added an option for Default Paid By (a default for the Cheque # / Paid By column in new donations).

•Added the menu option Maintenance ⇒ Email Sending Configuration, which allows you to set up how to send emails from the DONATION program.

•Added the menu options Database ⇒ Email Backup, for sending a backup to yourself or someone else by email (as an attachment), and Database ⇒ Restore Emailed Backup, for restoring a backup database that you saved from the attachment in such an email.

•Added an Email/Print button to the receipt-viewing window for standard (not mail-merged) receipts, for emailing the receipts to donors as PDF attachments, assuming the donors have email addresses. (For those donors without email addresses, there is an option to instead print their receipts when you click this button.)

•When sending emails to request a license key or an evaluation extension, improved some of the logic that detects what your name and email address are, to send the email from. It now uses the ones you configured in Maintenance ⇒ Email Sending Configuration, or if that has not been configured, it reads them from your default email program (such as Outlook, Outlook Express, or Mozilla Thunderbird).

•When sending emails to a Donor, by right-clicking on the Email Address field and picking Send Email from the popup menu, it now uses the configuration set up in Maintenance ⇒ Email Sending Configuration, and it uses a new window for entering the email details and sending them from within DONATION. (Previously, it used your default email program, such as Outlook, which might not have worked if you hadn't configured an email program on your computer because you only used web mail, such as hotmail or Gmail.)

•The date-selection windows for receipt mailing labels or envelopes, created with Reports ⇒ Receipt ⇒ Mailing Labels or Reports ⇒ Receipt ⇒ Envelopes, now allow you to specify that you want to omit labels or envelopes for donors who have an email address. (If the receipts were sent by email, you don't also need to send them by mail.)

•When you start the program for the first time, it will try to detect what receipt style to use (for which country and language), based on your Windows Control Panel Regional and Language Settings, and let you know what it set that too. Unfortunately, if any existing users of the program in English Canada happen to have their Windows settings incorrectly set to "English (USA)", this new feature will set their receipt style to "U.S.A.", and they will have to fix it via the Maintenance ⇒ Receipt Options menu option.

•Changed PDF files generated from the program (for example for receipts) to be non-modifiable, by encrypting them and setting a number of protection settings. This is required by the Canada Revenue Agency for emailed receipts in Canada. Please read the new help section on Emailing Receipts for further concerns about this, however.

•Added a warning in this Help file about using bitmap signatures on your receipts for Canadian users, based on CRA instructions which seem to technically forbid doing this in the way that DONATION does it.

•The Postal Code field is now automatically capitalized, so you don't have to enter it as capital letters in countries like Canada that use letters in their Postal Codes.

•Phone numbers entered as all digits with no separators are now automatically reformatted when a Donor record is Saved, so that 1234567 is changed to 123-4567, and 1234567890 is changed to (123) 456-7890.

•The validation of the Amount (or Total Amount) and Eligible Amount fields for the Donations on the main window is now mostly done when you Save the changes, not when you move out of those fields. This allows for a bit more flexibility in data entry, so for instance you don't get stuck on the Amount field if you want to go back and change the Date field, before entering the Amount.

•The Donor Mailing Label and Envelope reports now include a hidden field for total donations this year, so that you can Filter on it, for example to select only donors who haven't donated this year, or only donors who have donated certain amounts (for instance, over $1,000).

•Mail-merge letters using the "Donor Information only" option now include a TotalAmount field that can be added to the letters, or Filtered on, showing the total amount this donor has donated this year (or 0, if they haven't donated anything). That allows you, among other things, to create "prospecting" letters to "donors" who have yet to donate.

•On the Reports and standard Receipt-viewing window, changed the "Page 1", "Prev Page", "Next Page" and "Last Page" buttons to VCR-style image buttons.

•Fixed a bug in the new category-selection drop-down control in the window for a selecting a range of dates in Reports ⇒ Donor ⇒ Donation Info ⇒ Sort by Name, Sort by Amount and Sort by Member/Envelope #, and Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ All Donations ⇒ Sort by Name and Sort by Date. That drop-down was missing a scrollbar, so you could only see the first 5 donation categories in it. (You could actually select any of the ones that were after the first 5, by using the down arrow key or PgDn, but that was not obvious!)

•Fixed a bug in the built-in receipts, if you had selected Quebec (French only) as the Receipt Style: your Organization Name 1 wouldn't appear on the receipts if Organization Name 2 wasn't also filled in, in Maintenance ⇒ Organization Info.

•Hopefully, fixed a problem where sometimes the novaPDF PDF printer doesn't get installed successfully and gives an error message.

Fixes in Version 3.15c (June 18, 2009):

•In Reports ⇒ Donor ⇒ Donation Info ⇒ Sort by Name, Sort by Amount and Sort by Member/Envelope #, and Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ All Donations ⇒ Sort by Name and Sort by Date, you are now prompted for a category as well as a range of dates. You can select the default of "All", to include all categories, or select just one category. (To select two or more categories, but not all of them, select "All" then use a Filter.)

•Changed all message boxes in the program (those small windows that come up with messages, and buttons such as OK, or Yes/No) to use a larger font, and sometimes to use boldface in order emphasize the important points.

•When you are filling in the Organization Info the first time you start the program, if your Organization Name includes the words "church" or "chapel", the program prompts you with an option to read the Help page for Features for Churches.

•Added "PayPal" to the Cheque # / Paid By drop-down list for donations. (You can also enter it by typing just "Pay", and the rest will pop up.)

•Fixed a tiny bug in the feature that should restore the program's main window to the same size and position on your screen as where you last used it. In some cases, if the window wasn't maximized and you had it moved over to the right some, or down some, it might not be restored to that same position.

Fixes in Version 3.15b (April 22, 2009):

•Fixed a bug in Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ Summary by Category: the final number at the bottom, "Total Distinct Donors across all Categories", was for the whole year, not the entered range of dates.

Fixes in Version 3.15 (April 20, 2009):

•There is a new initial startup window for the first time you start DONATION, which allows you to choose between the normal initialization steps for a new empty database and restoring a backup of the database, from a previous installation of DONATION on another computer, or the same computer.

•Added the Reports ⇒ Report Browser menu option, which allows you to browse through all built-in reports in the program, and see detailed descriptions of them, to help you select which report you want to use. You can also still select all of the same reports via the Report menu's Donor, Donation, Receipt and Category sub-menus.

•When you are editing the donation date on the main window, you can now use the + and - keys, either on the top row of your keyboard or on the numeric keypad, to increase or decrease the date by one day. (This is similar to a feature in Quicken, QuickBooks and perhaps other accounting programs.)

•Added a menu option Letters ⇒ Mail Merge Training Videos on the Web which takes you to the web page which contains several videos for learning how to use the Letters menu options for mail merge letters and receipts.

•Added a new report: Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ Current Donor History, which shows how much the current donor has given in each year that you have data for in the database.

•Re-ordered the options on the Database menu, to put the most important options (the ones for Backups) at the top. Also renamed Import Data to Import All Data.

•Added an option to include a return address section and a logo in the top-left corner of donor or receipt envelopes.

•Added the Use French Dates checkbox in the Maintenance ⇒ Receipt Options window, to allows you to use French dates in the built-in receipts, and in all mail-merge letters and receipts.

•Added the special mail-merge fields «French» and «English», which when inserted into a mail merge template letter or receipt, overrides the Use French Dates setting.

•Added a right-click menu on the Donor List, with options New Donor, Edit Donor, Delete Donor, and Find Donor. These same functions can also be done with the New button in the Donor Details area, by clicking into any field in the Donor Details area, with the Delete button in the Donor Details area, and with File ⇒ Find Donor (or Ctrl+F) respectively.

•On the reports viewing window, disabled the Page 1, Prev Page, Next Page and Last Page buttons if there is only one page in the report.

•Added a few more helpful details to the Help page for Filtering Reports.

•In Maintenance ⇒ Change Password ⇒ Limited User Password, the program now gives a message if you specify a Limited User Password when there is no Program Entry Password. This is because in that case, the program will not prompt for a password when it starts up.

•In the help page for Saving Reports to Files, added a section about the very useful Save as type "HTML Table", which generates output that looks a lot more like the original report than other Save as types.

•Made some small changes to the window that comes up when you select Letters ⇒ Mass Mailing, so that it will fit if your screen dimensions are 800x600.

•Made some small changes to the main window, so that at screen dimensions of 800x600 the bottom part of the donations area (with the totals) isn't cut off.

•Fixed a tiny bug in Letters ⇒ One Letter and Letters ⇒ Mass Mailing, where if you pick the Current Donation information or Individual Donation information options from the first radio boxes, and include the «ReceiptNum» field in the letter (which is an unusual thing to do with that type of letter), the receipt number shows with only 4 digits, i.e. like 2009-0001, instead of the new 5-digit format introduced in version 3.14, 2009-00001.

•Fixed a tiny bug in Reports ⇒ Receipt ⇒ All Receipts, where part of the last digit of the Receipt # was cut off when you printed the report. (It looked fine on screen.)

Fixes in Version 3.14b (February 26, 2009):

•In all mailing label and envelope reports, added an email field that isn't printed, but can be filtered on. This allows you to use a filter to select only donors without email addresses.

•Fixed a bug introduced by version 3.13, where for Canadian users, receipts created before you installed version 3.13 could not be reprinted with Receipt ⇒ Reprint Range. (It would say there was no matching data for the report.)

•Fixed several related bugs introduced by version 3.13, where for Canadian users who selected the "Use separate receipts for Gifts in Kind" option, it wasn't correctly distinguishing between regular and gift in kind receipts when you used the Letters menu options, or if you had "Create receipts via mail merge instead of normal report method" selected and you used Receipt ⇒ Reprint Range or Receipt ⇒ Gift in Kind Receipts ⇒ Reprint Range. As a result, it might allow gift in kind mail-merge receipt formats to be generated for non-gift in kind donations, and non-gift in kind receipt formats to be generated for gift in kind donations.

Fixes in Version 3.14 (February 25, 2009):

•Added the Database ⇒ Change Date of Donations menu option, which allows you to change all donations with one date to be on a different date. This would most often come up if you had used One Date Donation Entry, and found that you entered a batch of donations for the wrong date.

•Changed receipt numbers to be 5 digits rather than four, so that for instance the first receipt number for 2009 would be 2009-00001. This allows for up to 99,999 receipts per year, rather than the previous maximum number of 9,999.

•Removed the Allow January option, because occasionally people were erroneously using it to enter donations in the next year, instead of using Maintenance ⇒ Change Year ⇒ Next Year. The Allow January option was only needed in the case of a postal strike around Christmas, if the government allowed charities to count donations received in January as being for the previous year. It will be restored to the program if that ever happens again.

•In Help ⇒ Request or Install License Key, it used to be that the "Request License Key for your Organization" button wasn't shown if the program couldn't see a reason for you to need a new key. (For instance, if your support and upgrades expiry date hadn't passed, and wasn't within the next two months, the button wasn't shown.) Now, it is always shown, to deal with some unusual circumstances when you may need to request an updated key even though you are not close to your expiry date. An example of that is if you have been granted an extra 3 months of support and upgrades due to a successful referral of another user, so you need an updated license key to inform the program of your new renewal date.

•Fixed a bug introduced by version 3.11: When starting a new year with Maintenance ⇒ Change Year ⇒ Next Year (or Previous Year), any email addresses that had been filled in were not copied over to the new year. To fix this for users who already opened the 2009 year and thus lost any email addresses entered in 2008, the new version of the program will prompt you when you first start it, to copy those email addresses forward from 2008 to 2009(if there are any to be copied).

•Fixed a bug where doing mail merge using a letter or receipt file that was saved to HTML by Microsoft Word, but not in the "Web Page, Filtered" format, could hang indefinitely. A helpful message will also come up when this is causing problems.

Fixes in Version 3.13g (February 5, 2009):

•Changed the installation program to prevent an extremely rare problem where it would get stuck on the License Agreement screen.

Fixes in Version 3.13f (February 3, 2009):

•Mail merge letters and receipts will not work if your Long Date Format, set in Control Panel, gives dates over 20 characters long. This normally only happens of your Long Date Format includes the name of the day (for example "Monday"), which probably is undesirable to appear in a date in a letter or receipt anyways. The program now tests for this problem when you do mail merges, and tells you how to fix it if you need to.

Fixes in Version 3.13e (January 30, 2009):

•Fixed a bug introduced by version 3.13d, where if you have selected "Create Receipts via mail merge rather than normal report method" in the Maintenance ⇒ Receipt Options window, receipts for the USA gave an error message.

Fixes in Version 3.13d (January 30, 2009):

•Fixed a bug introduced by version 3.13, where if you have selected "Create Receipts via mail merge rather than normal report method" in the Maintenance ⇒ Receipt Options window, any attempt to create receipts just gave the error message "Error retrieving receipt(s)".

•Added a prompt to optionally do a backup of your database before doing an update with the new Help ⇒ Check for Updates menu option.

Fixes in Version 3.13c (January 29, 2009):

•Fixed a number of problems if you used Mozilla Firefox as your default web browser instead of the more common Internet Explorer. Basically, in that case none of the options in the program that take you to a web page (like Help ⇒ Donation on the Web) worked, and Help ⇒ Check for Updates didn't work either.

•Simplified the Help ⇒ Check for Updates menu option a bit, so that it now downloads the update file from the Software4Nonprofits.com web site directly, rather than doing it through your web browser (for instance Internet Explorer).

Fixes in Version 3.13b (January 28, 2009):

•Fixed a bug introduced by version 3.13 where in some unusual circumstances, you could not create new receipts with the Receipt menu options.

•Fixed a bug where after using most options in the Receipt menu, the Database ⇒ Validate menu option would always give an error.

Fixes in Version 3.13 (January 26, 2009):

•For Canadian users, there is now an option in the Maintenance ⇒ Receipt Options window, for "Use different receipts for Gifts in Kind / Non-Cash Gifts", which defaults to being turned on (checked). When this is checked, a new Receipt ⇒ Gift in Kind Receipts sub-menu appears, with options for creating these different Gift in Kind receipts.

•When that option is selected, mail-merge letters created with the Letters menu options have a new option for "Gift in Kind Receipt information", with distinct receipt designs for this purpose provided in new sample letters.

•For Canadian users, there is now an option in the Maintenance ⇒ Main Window Options window, to add a drop-down arrow to the Donation Description field. Clicking that arrow pops up a window for entering Appraiser information for Gifts in Kind, which may be required if the value of the Gift in Kind is significant.

•On the program's main window, changed the "Find String" prompt below the Donor List to read "Find Name / #", to make it clear that it also searches by member/envelope number. Put a border around the area to the right of that prompt, where what you are typing in to find appears. Changed both the prompt, and the bordered area, so that if you click in them, they bring up the Finding a Donor help page, to explain how they are used.

•In the Reports ⇒ Custom Report menu option, don't display the Donor field "Member/Envelope #" if it's not displayed in the Donor Details area of the main widow (as set in Maintenance ⇒ Main Window Options), and name it either "Member #" or "Envelope #" depending on the related setting in Maintenance ⇒ Receipt Options.

•In Reports ⇒ Custom Report, other fields that are not displayed in the Donor Details area or Donation Details area (as set in Maintenance ⇒ Main Window Options) are also not shown in the lists of fields you can report on.

•Added the Help ⇒ Check for Updates menu option, which brings up a window that allows you to check for updates to the program that are newer than your current version. It also allows you to specify whether or not the program should remind you to check for updates monthly. (By default, it does remind you.)

•All of the mailing labels reports now prompt you with an option to skip used labels on your first page of label paper, when you click Print. This allows you to use up partly used pages of label paper.

•The Donor mailing labels and envelope reports now prompt you for whether to do them for all donors, or only for donors with donations in a range of dates.

•There is a somewhat techie new feature available when editing template mail-merge letters and inserting fields into them, for optionally excluding pieces of those letters if the values in certain merge fields are empty.

•There is another somewhat techie new feature available when editing template mail-merge letters and inserting fields into them, for skipping the page break between letters, so that you can in effect create a report with mail merge, instead of letters or receipts. This could allow you to create certain types of reports that cannot be created with Reports ⇒ Custom Report.

•In the Database ⇒ Switch Databases window, it now prevents you from entering a file extension of "METADATA", or file extensions containing periods. These restrictions prevent a couple of possible (though extremely rare) bugs.

•Fixed a bug in the Receipt ⇒ Delete Range menu option, where if you tried to delete a range of over 500 receipts, you would get an inappropriate error message about not being able to reprint a range of over 500 receipts.

•When you run DONATION in Windows XP, it now checks for whether you are running with an administrative login, and advises you not to run it that way if you aren't. (With Windows Vista, you are already required to run it with administrative privileges.)

•Fixed a bug in the Letters ⇒ Mass Mailing menu option where very occasionally the page breaks between successive letters didn't work when you printed them or used Print Preview, and the top of the next letter would move up into the bottom of the previous one.

•Fixed a bug when generating mail-merge letters for users in Quebec who set their Regional and Language Options to French, where the letters would give an error message and fail if the name of the current month had an accent in it. At the same time, made the dates displayed in such mail-merge letters use the correct order of the elements, though they are still in English. (So, for instance, for French it would be "31 December 2009", whereas in English it is "December 31, 2009".

•Fixed a bug where the Save PDF button on reports created with either Reports ⇒ Custom Report or Database ⇒ SQL Select didn't work - the "Printing PDF" progress window just stayed up forever (and had to be manually closed), and the PDF file was never created.

•Fixed a small bug where if you clicked Save As when you were viewing a report, then clicked the Help button on the window that came up, the Help for that window would not come up - it would say it could not find the DONATION.HLP help file.

Fixes in Version 3.12b (November 11, 2008):

•Fixed a bug in the mail-merge receipts for U.S. users, where if you included the Check # / Paid By field in the DetailsTable field, the heading of that column in the merged receipt used the Canadian spelling "Cheque" instead of the U.S. spelling "Check". (This also applies to mail-merge letters for the "Total Donations Information" option, which can also include the DetailsTable field.) Note: This bug was never present in the normal built-in receipts created with the Receipt menu options.

•When you create receipts and don't print them, then close the window displaying the receipts, there is a message box that comes up asking you whether to save the receipt information. (The included donation information has already been saved.) Clarified the question in that message box, and made the default answer for it be No, rather than Yes.

•When your support and upgrades eligibility has expired by at least one month, the program will start giving you messages informing you of that fact (though only once a month).

•Fixed a weakness in Database ⇒ Backup, Database ⇒ Restore and Database ⇒ Restore Old Backup where if the last backup directory used was the diskette drive (i.e. A:), and that drive is not currently available because there is no diskette in it, you would get error messages but not be able to pick a different drive for your backup or restore. Now it gives you an option to either make that drive available and try again (the only option previously), or instead switch to a standard backup directory on your local hard drive. (And having done that, you can then switch to any drive or directory in the Save Backup File As or Restore Backup File dialog box that comes up.)

Fixes in Version 3.12 (September 30, 2008):

•Added a way to mark a Donor as Non-Receiptable, so that no receipts will ever be generated for its donations. You do this by setting its Donor Category 1 or Category 2 value to "Non-Receiptable", which you can set up via the Maintenance ⇒ Donor Category 1 or Maintenance ⇒ Donor Category 2 options. See Handling Non-Receiptable Donors and Donations for more information.

•Added Reports ⇒ Donor ⇒ Envelope Box Labels, which create labels containing just "Envelope # ..." and the donor's name, for all donors that have a Member/Envelope #. These labels could be put on the boxes in which you give the donors their envelopes for the year.

•Added a check, under Windows Vista or later versions of Windows, that the program is running as an Administrator. It will not run under those versions of Windows if it is not run as an Administrator, because various features will not work and unexpected problems can occur.

•When adding a DetailsTable to a mail-merge letter, you now have an option to specify that there should be two groups of columns on each row, in order to save space, as long as you are including at most three donation fields in the table.

•Fixed a bug where if you printed a report or a receipt to your printer, and then used the Save PDF button to "print" it to PDF, it would just print on the real printer again, and the "Printing PDF" window would stay up. (Unfortunately, this bug still exists in the mail-merge letters created with the Letters menu options.)

Fixes in Version 3.11 (July 17, 2008):

New and Improved Features

•Added Save to PDF capabilities to the window for viewing and printing reports and standard receipts, and also to the internal mail merge editor for printing mail-merge letters.

•Added an Email Address field to the Donor Details. If you use a standard email program like Outlook or Outlook Express, you can right-click on filled-in Email Address fields, and pick Send Email from a popup menu, to create an email addressed to this email address. (You can also use File ⇒ Send Email to do the same thing.) Note: Starting in version 3.20, the Send Email option no longer requires you to have an email program like Outlook configured, and does not use that email program.

•When converting to this version from prior versions, if one of your Other Info 1 through 3 fields had a label (as specified in Maintenance ⇒ Main Window Options) containing the word "Email" or "E-mail" (with any capitalization), the data in that field will be moved to the new Email Address field. The label for that Other Info field will also be changed back to "Other Info X".

•Made a number of Donor Details fields that not everyone uses optional. (Previously, only the Member/Envelope # field was optional.) You can select which fields you don't want to see via the Maintenance ⇒ Main Window Options window.

•Made the File ⇒ New Member/Env. # and File ⇒ Edit Comments menu options work whether or not the cursor is currently in the relevant Donor Details field. (Previously, those menu options were only enabled when the cursor was in the relevant field.) Also, File ⇒ Edit Comments works even if you have made the Comments field invisible via the new options mentioned above.

•Added a drop-down arrow to the Member/Env. # field in the Donor Details area of the main window, which pops up a one-item menu for adding a new Member/Env. #. (This is the same behaviour as if you right-click in that field, and helps make this option more visible.)

•When importing donations via Database ⇒ Import Donations, it now allows the import if a donation being imported is for the same donor, and with the same date and amount, as an existing donation in the database, as long as it is for a different donation category. Previously it did not allow this.

•When saving a new or updated donor, a confirmation question has always come up if you either change the name of an existing donor that already has donations, or you enter a name that is the same name as another donor. Previously, if you answered "No" to those questions (to not make the change), it would cancel the insert or update entirely, losing your changes. Now, it just cancels the save, and lets you make your own changes if desired, then try Save again, or click Cancel if you prefer.

•When sending email to request a license key or evaluation extension, it now re-uses any previously used From Name and Email address in that email sending window. If the window hasn't been used before, it tries to determine them from an Outlook, Outlook Express or Thunderbird profile if you use one of those email programs.

New and Fixed Reports

•Added two new reports: Reports ⇒ Donor ⇒ Envelopes, and Reports ⇒ Receipt ⇒ Envelopes. They print donors' names and addresses on standard #10 envelopes for all donors or all receipts with a specified receipt issued date, respectively.

•Added two new reports, Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ Receipted and Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ Non-Receiptable / Pre-Receipted. The former shows the details of all receipted donations. The latter shows the details of all donations that are not eligible to be included in a receipt, because they are for Non-Receiptable Donors or Donations.

•Changed Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ Unreceipted Donations, changing its name to just Unreceipted. Also, now it does not report on donors or donations that are Non-Receiptable, i.e. included in Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ Non-Receiptable / Pre-Receipted. (Between this modified report and the two new reports in the previous bullet point, all donations are printed.)

•Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ All Donations ⇒ Sort by Name and Sort by Date both now prompt for a range of dates to report on.

•Fixed a bug in Reports ⇒ Donor ⇒ Donation Info ⇒ Last 4 Years - it printed extra blank pages, and/or pages with just the year in a column.

•Fixed a bug in Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ Summary by Paid By - it printed extra pages with just the Cheque # / Paid By value in a column.

Other Bug Fixes

•Previously, the installation of the Network Server version of DONATION would not work correctly if you had not already installed the normal Local Database version on the same computer. That is now fixed.

•Fixed the positioning of the right-click popup menus for the Member/Env. # and the Comments fields in the Donor Details area of the main window, which were not always correct if you changed the sizing of that window.

•Made some minor improvements to the main window's layout and behaviour when it is resized.

Fixes in Version 3.10c (April 30, 2008):

•Fixed a small bug introduced by version 3.10b into Letters ⇒ Mass Mailing, where the 2nd and subsequent pages of any mailing started a fraction of an inch lower down the page than the first page.

•In the new internal mail merge editor, moved the Edit menu options Insert Image, Insert Table and Insert Horizontal Line to a new Insert menu, and added another option Page Break to that menu, to allow you to create multiple-page letters (for example for a receipt with a cover letter).

•Fixed a problem that could occur in the sample mail-merge receipt letters, where if you were using a signature bitmap the underline under it might not appear, or might appear incorrectly. However, unless you delete those files first before installing this version (or a later one) as an upgrade to version 3.10, they will not be replaced, because it might be replacing a version that you had edited!

Fixes in Version 3.10b (April 29, 2008):

•The details and summary tables that are available in the new mail-merged receipts (as well as mail merge Donation Totals information letters) will now have their header row repeated on subsequent pages, if the table starts on one page and continues on another.

•Added a menu and toolbar option for bringing up a Find dialog in the new internal mail merge editor. Also, added some more details to the help for that editor.

•Fixed a bug that could cause page breaks between mail merge letters or receipts not to work properly (I think particularly if you had a very large logo in the letterhead area).

•A small error was fixed in the French and Bilingual mail-merge receipt samples. The 2nd row of dashes (separating the 2nd copy of the receipt from the part that the donor keeps) was too long, and went onto two lines when printed. However, unless you delete these files first before installing this version (or a later one) as an upgrade to version 3.10, they will not be replaced, because it might be replacing a version that you had edited!

Fixes in Version 3.10 (April 25, 2008):

•The mail-merge features on the Letters menu have been completely redesigned and greatly simplified. They now use an internal editor, rather than exiting you out to your word processing program to edit the letters and do the merges. They also now allow you to create almost perfect replicas of the built-in receipts, but with whatever formatting or wording changes you want.

•New sample mail-merge letters and receipts are installed with the program, but any old mail-merge documents that you used with Microsoft Word can also optionally be converted to the new mail-merge letter format (which is HTML).

•When you generate receipts with the Receipt menu options, if you don't print those receipts, and exit the window displaying them, the program now gives you a choice as to whether or not to save the receipts back to the database. This lets you save them without printing them, so that you can later print them either with Receipt ⇒ Reprint Range, or with the Letters menu options. Or, you can choose the other option to have them not be saved, in the case where you just wanted to see what the receipts would look like (or didn't like something about what you saw), and don't want to keep the receipts in the database at this time.

•Renamed Maintenance ⇒ Receipt and Letters Options to Receipt Options, because the letters option (selecting a word processor) is no longer needed, with the new built-in editor for mail merge.

•In Maintenance ⇒ Receipt Options, there is now an option "Create Receipts using mail merge instead of normal report method". If you select this option, receipts created via the Receipt menu options are immediately displayed using the standard receipt mail-merge file, rather than as a report.

•Added menu options Letters ⇒ Backup and Letters ⇒ Restore, for Backing up and Restoring Letters Files, which you can use for simple backups of your customized letter or receipt files, or for transferring them between two computers.

•In reports created with Reports ⇒ Custom Report or Database ⇒ SQL Select, it now displays an optional title, along with other standard report header fields, in the header of the report (as long as it is in the Normal format, not the Grid format). Also, columns containing dollar figures are now automatically totalled at the bottom of the report. The optional Report Title is specified in the SQL Select window.

•Changed entry of donors so that if spaces were accidentally entered at the start or end of any of the name fields, they would automatically be removed. (Spaces would mess up the sort order in the Donor List.)

•For limited users, pressing Enter doesn't save a donation they are entering on the main window, as it normally does once you start entering a new donation. You have to click on Save or press F10 to save a donation you are entering. (You don't want limited users to accidentally save before they are finished entering a donation, because they aren't allowed to edit donations at all, even the ones they just edited.)

•Changed the Database ⇒ Import Donors window slightly. Now, when you Add fields from the Donor Fields list to the Fields to Import list, they are removed from the Donors Fields list to show that they are no longer available to be added.

•Fixed an obscure bug that only happened to one user, where trying to create a new donation would cause the program to give an error message about the function gf_default_categorynum and exit.

Fixes in Version 3.05 (February 29, 2008):

•Redesigned the One Date Donation Entry window, so that it optionally displays any existing donations for the specified date, as well as spaces to enter donations for all donors with no donations on that date. If you select that option, you can go in and out of that window multiple times for the same date (for example if you realize you need to add another donor), and still see the full totals at the end of your work.

•On the same window, on its settings window that comes up first, added options to show or not show the Cheque # / Paid By and Description fields for the donations.

•On the same window, change to highlight the Donor Name and Member/Envelope # fields on the selected row, to make it easier to see which row is selected.

•Changed the way the Cheque # / Paid By field for donations is edited, so that as you type, it shows you matches from the drop-down list. (This is similar to how some fields are entered in Quicken or QuickBooks, and is often called "autocomplete".)

•When you generate Duplicate or Corrected Receipts with the Receipt ⇒ Current Donor Duplicate/Corrected or Duplicate/Corrected Receipt by Number menu options, there are now two options: either include only the donations that were previously included in the receipt, or also include any new receiptable donations for the same donor.

•Added a new report, Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ Summary by Paid By, which gives totals of all donations over a specified date range, broken down by the value in the Cheque # / Paid By field. (When cheque numbers entered into that field, it groups them all together under the Paid By value "Check" or "Cheque", depending on your location.) This report could be helpful for getting a summary of receiptable versus non-receiptable donations, among other uses.

•Added a new help page on Features for Churches.

•Fixed a small display bug when you are editing a donor, and you resize the main window during the edit.

•In the 2nd part of Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ One Date Summary (summary by Paid By), use the word "Check" for the summary of all donations with cheque numbers for U.S. users, instead of "Cheque". For Canadian users, "Cheque" is still used.

•Added a “Member / Envelope # Checksum” to the bottom of Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ One Date Details with Member/Envelope #. This can be used as a double-check that you entered the donations for the correct donors when you use One Date Donation Entry, if you use envelope numbers and add those envelope numbers up with a calculator before doing your entries.

Fixes in Version 3.04e (January 31, 2008):

•Fixed a bug that only happened to users of the Network Version, and then only occasionally. When they created receipts that shouldn't be saved in the database (either because they were Sample receipts, or because they didn't Print them), they were sometimes saved in the database anyways.

•Fixed a couple of places in the program where message boxes (including the one confirming deleting a Donation) always used the date format MM/DD/YYYY, rather than the default format you had set on your computer. (That default date format was already used everywhere else in DONATION.)

Fixes in Version 3.04d (January 25, 2008):

•Fixed display bugs in the receipts, introduced in version 3.03. If you selected the Receipt Style For either Australian option, or "Other" (i.e. anything other than the more commonly-used Canada, Quebec and U.S.A. options) in Maintenance ⇒ Receipt and Letters Options, the main amount printed over top of the heading for the amount.

•In Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ Details, One Page per Donor and Category Totals, One Page per Donor, add in invisible fields category1 and category2 (for Donor Category 1 and Donor Category 2) so that you can Filter on them.

Fixes in Version 3.04c (January 24, 2008):

•Fixed a bug in the Send Email window (used to request License Keys or Evaluation Extensions), where if the character "#" appeared in your organization name or address, the email would not send properly. (There were smaller problems with "&" and "%" appearing your organization name or address, which were also fixed.)

Fixes in Version 3.04b (January 21, 2008):

•In the Send Email window (used to request License Keys or Evaluation Extensions), the default method of sending the email is now to send it invisibly via a web form on the Software4Nonprofits.com web site, which works for any user with an Internet connection. Also added a Help button to the Send Email window.

•Fixed a small problem introduced by a change in version 3.04, in Custom Reports and SQL Select: It always displayed the report in Print Preview mode, like all regular reports. Unfortunately, this is not a good choice if you select the Grid display style, because that takes away the capability to resize or rearrange the columns, which is the big advantage of the Grid style. So, Grid reports do not start in Print Preview mode.

Fixes in Version 3.04 (January 19, 2008):

New Features

•Added the capability to use DONATION with the multi-user Firebird Server database software, instead of the single-user Embedded Firebird that it normally comes with. This can allow you to have multiple users on a network access the same database, either one at a time or simultaneously. Separate licensing (and payment) is needed to use DONATION with the Firebird Server, even for only one at a time usage, and additional payment is always required for simultaneous usage. Details are on the PRICING page on the web site.

•Added the Database ⇒ Restore Old Database (DONATION3.DB) menu option. It allows you to restore a database file from older versions of DONATION (version 2.70b or earlier), then have that file converted to the new database format.

•Added the Database ⇒ Merge Duplicate Donors menu option.

•In the Receipt ⇒ Filtered Donors menu option, added a Minimum Type drop-down, to control how the Minimum Amount criterion for donations is interpreted.

•Added the Receipt ⇒ Delete Range menu option, for deleting a range of receipt numbers created in error, which have not yet been sent to the donors.

•Changed the Maintenance ⇒ Receipt and Letters Options menu option, adding in a "Starting Receipt #" field, which can set your starting receipt number for each year to something other than 1. (Very few organizations will need to use this, or for that matter should use this!)

•Added the Help ⇒ Quick Start menu item, which takes you to the Startup Options page in the help.

•Added an option in Database ⇒ SQL Select (and thus in Reports ⇒ Custom Reports, which uses SQL Select), to select either the Portrait or Landscape orientation for the generated report.

•Added a check for the program being started twice - the 2nd time, it just gives a message and exits.

Bug Fixes and Small Feature Fixes

•Fixed a bug where if the main window has been minimized when the program is closed (for example if you Shutdown or Restart your computer with DONATION minimized), it would start again minimized. As a result, users thought it hadn't started, tried to start it again, and got an error message about not being able to connect to the database. Now, if it was closed when it was minimized, it starts the next time at its original standard size and position.

•In Database ⇒ Reassign Envelope Numbers, if you chose to do it in alphabetical order, that order is now case-insensitive, like the Donor List. (I.e. if a last name starts with a small letter, it is sorted in with other last names that start with that same letter, capitalized.)

•Fixed Reports ⇒ Donor ⇒ Potential Duplicates so that donors are viewed as potential duplicates if either the business name, or the first and last names, are very similar (previously all 3 had to be very similar).

•Slightly re-wrote Reports ⇒ Donor ⇒ Potential Duplicates, so that it gives the same results as it used to, but will probably run more quickly. (However, it can still take a fair while if you have a very large number of donors.)

•Fixed a bug in Reports ⇒ Custom Report, where if you use the "Last, First" Donor column, and the "Sum(Total Amount)" or "Sum(Eligible Amount)" Donation columns, and a range of years, and Separate Totals, it gives an error when you run it from the SQL Select window.

•In the Help ⇒ Request or Install License Key window, display the "Request License Key for your Organization" button if you are within two months of your annual renewal date, so that you can get an updated key if you have paid your annual renewal. Previously, this button was not visible on this window unless you either were not yet licensed, or your annual renewal date had passed.

•Fixed a minor bug in Receipt ⇒ Filtered Donors, where if you put in values of Other Info 1, Other Info 2 or Other Info 3 to filter on, they were case-sensitive. They are now case-insensitive, as they were in versions of donation prior to 3.00.

•Fixed a small bug with the backup reminders, where if you make a backup with the Database ⇒ Backup menu option, you might still get a backup reminder as you exit the program.

•Fixed a small bug in Custom Reports and SQL Select: The report was not displayed in Print Preview mode, which all regular reports are displayed in.

•Fixed a bug on the main window: On program startup, the focus wasn't always on the Donor List, so you couldn't immediately scroll with the arrow keys etc. or find donors by typing initial letters of their last name or envelope numbers.

•Included an extra DLL in the full installation programs (for example DONINST.EXE), which is required by systems that have certain Windows Accessibility features turned on, and which caused an error message ("PowerBuilder Accessibility Error ...") if it was absent. Note: Most users did not have those Windows features turned on, so they did not get the message or need the DLL.

Fixes in Version 3.03b (December 5, 2007):

•Fixed the fact that Help ⇒ Revision History took you to the Introduction page of the Help, rather than the correct page that shows the history of the changes to the program in successive versions.

Fixes in Version 3.03 (December 4, 2007):

•Added a Business Name field to the Donor details. If there is a Business Name and also a Last Name and First Name, the business or organization is assumed to be the actual donor, and the individual's name is assumed to be a contact at that business.

•When this version starts up for the first time, any existing donors who have a Last Name filled in but no First Name are assumed to be businesses or organizations, and the contents of the Last Name field are moved to the Business Name.

•Made the importing and conversion routines, mail merge letters, and reports (including custom reports) work with the Business Name.

•The validation of required fields for the Donor is now done on Save, not as you edit the fields, so that you can enter the fields in any order without getting "stuck" in a required field. Required fields are either a Business Name or both a First Name and Last Name (or all three), plus Address Line 1.

•The program will now work with Large size Fonts (set in Control Panel's Display tool, Settings tab), as long as the screen resolution is at least 1024 x 768. It will also work with Normal Fonts with screen resolutions as small as 800 x 600. (Previously, problems occurred with Large size Fonts, most specifically that the printout of the receipts always looked bad.)

•The main window now adjusts its contents nicely when it is resized, and also, it remembers both its location and size between runs of the program.

•The One Date Donation Entry window also does that, and when it is displayed, the main window is hidden.

•The One Date Donation Entry window now has a Find Donor button, which you can use to find donors by Name or Member/Envelope # - the same as you get by using File ⇒ Find Donor on the main window. It can be accessed with either Alt+F or Ctrl+F.

•Tightened up the handling of support and updates eligibility, so that if your updates eligibility period (12 months from the date of your last Initial Purchase or Annual Renewal payment, or from being issued a free license) has expired, you cannot install an updated version of DONATION that was released after the expiry date. You also can't install a License Key that has already expired (i.e. that is more than 12 months old) unless you have previously installed a non-expired License Key on the same installation of DONATION.

•If you have exceeded the number of donors with donations that you are licensed for, and you bring up the Evaluation and Licensing window with Help ⇒ Request or Install License Key, it will show the button with which you request another license key (one that allows for your actual number of donors with donations).

•Added two new columns ("# Donations" and "# Donors") to Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ Category Totals. There is also now an extra total at the bottom of this report, labelled "Total Distinct Donors across all Categories", that just gives the total number of donors with donations. This is the number of donors that is relevant for determining which level of payment is required for an Initial Purchase or Annual Renewal fee.

•Fixed a tiny bug in Reports ⇒ Donor ⇒ Mailing Labels with Member/Envelope # where if you used the Sort button to sort by the member/envelope #, the sort order was not quite correct.

•Fixed a couple of reports where the field for the donor name was too short, and names could be cut off at a shorter length than was necessary. (Many reports can still cut off the ends of very long names, because there is just not enough room on the page for the whole name.)

•Fixed a bug in Reports ⇒ Donor ⇒ Potential Duplicates, that caused it to print extra pages after the report.

•In Reports ⇒ Donor ⇒ Mailing Labels, added a non-displayed (i.e. invisible) member_number field (the Member/Envelope #), so that you can filter or sort on it. For instance, you could create labels for only those donors who have a Member/Envelope # by using the filter "member_number >= 0" (without the quotes).

•Fix a bug in the CSV files exported by Letters ⇒ Mass Mailing, that prevented them from being loaded into Excel properly, and could cause extra blank lines to appear in mail merge letters using the <<fulladdress>> field. Other than the blank lines, however, it already worked correctly if you were merging to Microsoft Word directly.

•Fixed a small bug in the sample mail merge letter receipts_merge.doc, used in Letters ⇒ Mass Mailing when merging Receipt letters to Microsoft Word, where the <<ytdtotalamount>> field had a typo in it, causing errors to come up during the merge. (However, this file is never updated during an upgrade, so this will only help new users.)

•Improved the error message if there is a conversion error when converting the database from version 2.70 or earlier to the current version. If the problem is in converting the DONOR table, the message points to a helpful Support Forum posting about the problem.

•Made the Maintenance ⇒ Organization Info window wider, so it would be clearer that you can enter up to 70 characters for the Organization Name fields. (You always could do that, and the field would scroll right if necessary as you typed, but this makes it easier to see all of a long organization name.)

•Very minor (unusually unnoticeable) change to the formatting of the receipt, to make printing to PDF with some PDF printer software work better.

•Added a section on exporting reports to PDF to the help page Exporting Data from the Program, and added PDF to the help's index.

•Fixed a weakness of the Database ⇒ Import Donors option, where it would allow you to import invalid or duplicate member/envelope numbers.

Fixes in Version 3.02 (November 5, 2007):

•Fixed a bug in the receipts, where if a donor had a member/envelope #, that number was not being printed on the receipts. (It was printed there until version 3.00.)

•Added a control in the Maintenance ⇒ Receipt and Letters Options window, that allows you to specify the label for the member/envelope # field on the receipts, if you use such numbers for your donors. It can be "Envelope #" (the default), or "Member #", or you can choose to never have the member/envelope numbers displayed on receipts at all.

•On Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ Details, One Page per Donor and Category Totals, One Page per Donor, if you use the Sort or Filter buttons, it no longer displays the sort or filter criteria on each page of the report. (Most reports do display them, but because these reports may be sent to donors, it is less appropriate to display the sort or filter criteria on them.)

•Warn licensed users if they have more donors with donations than they are licensed for, and give an option in that case to go to the PRICING page on the web site to pay for the difference.

•In the version of the Evaluation and Licensing window reached via Help ⇒ Request or Install License Key, the Request License Key button is now visible if either your support and upgrades period has expired, or you have exceeded the number of donors with donations that you are licensed for.

•Fixed a small bug where after re-opening a new database or new year (for example with Maintenance ⇒ Change Year, Database ⇒ Restore, or Database ⇒ Switch Databases), the drop-down list of Donor Category 1 and Donor Category 2 values was not re-loaded from the database (or year) that was just switched to, and thus an incorrect list could be displayed.

•Improved the wording of the error messages given if an invalid donation date is entered, either on the main window or on the One Date Donation Entry Options window.

•Fixed a weakness in Database ⇒ Backup and Database ⇒ Restore, where if the last backup directory used was a drive that is not always available (for example a CD drive or a drive for a USB memory key), and it is not currently available, you would get error messages but not be able to pick a different drive for your backup or restore. Now it gives you an option to either make that drive available and try again (the only option previously), or instead switch to a standard backup directory on your local hard drive.

•Changed a couple of reports (Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ One Date Summary and Summary by Category) to have at least 1/2" left margins, so that they can be 3-hole punched without cutting out any of the text on the left.

•Added a note to the Restoring Backups help page about how to restore backups from version 2.70 or earlier (DONATION3.DB files).

Fixes in Version 3.01 (November 1, 2007):

•Added an option to the Maintenance ⇒ Main Window Options window to set the default donation category.

•Added an option to the One Date Donation Entry Options window to override that default donation category, for that use of the One Date Donation Entry window.

•Include "Gift in Kind" on the Cheque # / Paid By drop-down for donations, for all users. (Previously it was only shown for U.S. users.)

•Added the menu option Database ⇒ Reassign Envelope Numbers, to reassign the envelope numbers to all or some donors.

•Fixed a bug introduced in version 3.00, where Database ⇒ Restore could sometimes fail with the message "Can't rename database file ... prior to doing the restore."

•Fixed a bug in Letters ⇒ One Letter and Letters ⇒ Mass Mailing where the Browse button used to select a word processor document file with your merge codes in it would not work properly, and you had to instead type in the full pathname for that file.

Fixes in Version 3.00e (October 27, 2007):

•Fixed a minor bug in Maintenance ⇒ Donation Categories, Maintenance ⇒ Donor Category 1 and Maintenance ⇒ Donor Category 2 - none of them showed their lists of categories in alphabetical order. However, the lists were already in the right order in the drop-down fields used for data entry.

Fixes in Version 3.00d (October 24, 2007):

•Improved the installation program to resolve a problem for users with Windows Vista, when they are upgrading from version 2.70 or lower, where the newest version of their previous database file would not be converted to the new format.

Fixes in Version 3.00c (October 22, 2007):

•Added a new menu option, Database ⇒Delete All Data, which does that - delete all data in your database. This would rarely be used, but can be used to help with restoring backups from version 2.70 or earlier.

Fixes in Version 3.00b (October 22, 2007):

•Fixed a bug where when you are logged in as a limited user, running Reports ⇒ Donation ⇒ One Date Details with Member/Envelope # gives an error message and crashes the program.

•Improved validation of values entered for the Member/Env. # Donor field, restrict the values to be between 0 and 999999999.

Fixes in Version 3.00 (October 19, 2007):

•Changed to using the embedded version of the Firebird Database, instead of the previous Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere (ASA) database. If you have a previous version of DONATION, the first time you start this new version, you will be prompted to let it automatically convert all of your data from the old database to the new database. (The new Firebird database file is named DONATION4.DB, whereas the old Sybase ASA one was named DONATION3.DB.)

•Unlike with the old Sybase ASA database, it is not currently possible with the new Firebird database to move your database to a different computer on a local area network and use it remotely on that computer. This will be possible in a future release, using the full multi-user version of Firebird.

As part of the change to Firebird, several changes to database fields were made, and several other related changes were made, as follows:

•Expanded the First Name field for the Donor from 20 characters to 30 characters.

•Changed many reports that used to have separate columns for the First name and the Last Name to instead just have a Name field, which displays the name in the format "Last, First".

•Added a 2nd Organization Name field in the Maintenance ⇒ Organization Info window, which is intended for use by Quebec organizations that have both an English and a French name. Receipts for users in Quebec (identified by picking one of two relevant options in the Maintenance ⇒ Receipt and Letters Options window), will have both names printed on their receipts, if they have both been filled in.

•Changed the lookup of Donors in the Donor List which is done by typing in a Member/Envelope #, so that it waits until you have typed in the entire number before it goes to the donor with that number. Previously, if you typed in "1", for instance, it would go to the first donor whose Member/Envelope # started with "1", which was not very helpful. Now at that point it will only go to the donor whose Member/Envelope # is exactly "1".

•Replaced the optional donation field called "Fair Market Value", which corresponded to the total amount of a donation when the donor received something in return for it (for example at a fundraising dinner, where they receive the dinner). Previously the "Amount" field was meant to be the amount that the donor could claim on their taxes (excluding the value of the thing they received, which the Canada Revenue Agency calls the "advantage"), and the "Fair Market Value" field was the total amount they actually gave. Now, instead of "Fair Market Value" there is an optional "Eligible Amount" field. When this is displayed, the main "Amount Field" is now called "Total Amount", which should be clearer. To put this another way, the "Amount" or "Total Amount" is really the same as the old "Fair Market Value", and the "Eligible Amount" is really the same as the old "Amount". You do not have to enter an Eligible Amount unless it is less than the Total Amount.

•Canadian receipts now comply with the Canada Revenue Agency's guidelines for what it calls "split receipting". New wording was added to the receipts when the donor has received an "advantage" (something in return) for their donation, which is indicated by entering an Eligible Amount which is less than the Total Amount. There is an option in the Maintenance ⇒ Receipt and Letters Options window that enables entering the Eligible Amount.

•Made some changes and additions to the merge field names for Letters ⇒ Mass Mailing. In particular, the field "year" is now named "year_number" in all letters; in the Receipt letters the field "ytdtotal" is now named "ytdtotalamount"; and some fields for eligible amounts have been added. This may require some adjustments to any mail-merge letters you have been using, though only if they included those fields.

•In the Database ⇒ Import Data option, added the ability to import the Eligible Amount into both the Donation and the Receipt tables.

•The Database ⇒ Backup option and the Database ⇒ Validate option now no longer require a separate "Check Backup" or "Check Validate" step.

•Backup files now have an extra file extension added to them, for example DONATION4.DB is normally backed up to DONATION4.DB.GBK, and they are not exact copies of the database file they backed up. (In fact, they are smaller, but they do contain all of the same information.) They cannot be just copied back in order to do a restore - you must use the Database ⇒ Restore option.

•Backups made with earlier versions of DONATION can no longer be used with this version.

Other improvements unrelated to the change to the Firebird database include:

•Added a popup calendar to the Donation Date field, which can be used either for entry, or for checking if you are not sure of the current date format. You can also still just type in the date.

•The date for One Date Donation Entry is now entered on the One Date Donation Entry Options window, rather than the One Date Donation Entry window itself.

•Changed Reports ⇒ Donor ⇒ Donation Info ⇒ Totals and Pledges by Name so that it only shows donors who have either a pledge or donations this year.

•Removed the Database ⇒ Import ChurchMouse Donors option, because nobody was using it anymore.

•The program now prompts you weekly (or at another desired frequency) to backup your database. You can set the desired frequency of reminders to Never, Daily, Weekly or Monthly, by using Database ⇒ Backup Reminder Frequency.

•Fixed a bug in both Letters ⇒ One Letter and Letters ⇒ Mass Mailing, where if you clicked the Browse button to select a different input word processor file, the File Open dialog box that came up did not take you to the Letters directory under your installation directory.

•Fixed a minor bug, where after deleting either a donor or a donation the focus did not go back to the Donor List, so you couldn't immediately use the cursor movement keys to move to another donor, or do a find by typing the first letters of a last name or a member/envelope number.

•In the Evaluation and Licensing window, changed the wording of the button "Request Paid or Free License for your Organization" to "Request License Key for your Organization", for clarity.

•Adjusted the font used in the reports displayed by Reports ⇒ Custom Report or Database ⇒ SQL Select, to be Arial 10pt. Previously it was a smaller font.

•Fixed a very minor issue in the window used to preview donors or donations to be imported with Database ⇒ Import Donors or Database ⇒ Import Donations, or data to be merged with Letters ⇒ Mass Mailing, where pressing ESC when viewing that window would do the import or the merge, rather than cancelling it as ESC should do.

•For Windows Vista users, the program must now be run by a user that has Administrative privileges. This prevents problems with some features not working properly, for instance Database ⇒ Switch Databases.

This topic was last edited on Mar 21, 2023