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DONATION Lite Changelog

What's new in DONATION Lite 4.00b

Oct 4, 2017
  • Changed the installation program to automatically fix problems that a few users were having, where for some reason it could not overwrite files in the program's installation directory, so the install failed.

New in DONATION Lite 4.00 (Oct 4, 2017)

  • This version uses a newer version of PowerBuilder, the program we use to create DONATION, and as such we are giving this release a new main version number (4.00).
  • When converting from Membership Plus databases, added handling for two never-before seen problems in the Membership Plus data: too-large internal Fund IDs (a number you don't see) that don't fit in the internal donation category numbers in DONATION (that you also don't see), and missing funds (donation categories) for donations. The donations with missing funds will be assigned your first donation category.
  • Fixed a very unusual problem when creating Bank Deposits, where you click the Deposit Slip button and it won't do it because it says the total cash from the donations being deposited doesn't match the Cash Count, even though it says the amounts are the same!
  • Fixed the Membership Plus conversion so it can now work with Membership Plus version 5.0d, which has an internal version number of 4.93, which made the program think it wasn't at least version 5 (the minimum version it knows how to convert).

New in DONATION Lite 3.86 (Aug 3, 2017)

  • Added both Custom Reports and a section listing all of your Memorized Reports at the end of the list in the Report Browser, unless you are using the Lite version that doesn't include Custom or Memorized Reports.
  • Memorized Reports can now have optional Descriptions added to them, in addition to their nameThe Descriptions can be added when you are memorizing them, or on the Memorized Reports window itself.
  • Added some details about a couple of powerful free WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML editors that you can use from our internal mail-merge editor, for things that cannot be done in the internal editor, to the page Configuring an Alternate HTML Editor.
  • Fixed a bug in the Database ? Switch Databases window where uses of the Browse button always gave a message that the selected file wasn't in the correct directory.
  • In the Reports ? Memorized Reports window, after running a report, and closing the window(s) doing that took you to, you return to the Memorized Reports window(Those other windows can be the main Reports window, or the SQL Select window.) Fixed a weakness where the information about the list of reports in the Memorized Reports window is not updated on that returnThat could be necessary if you made changes and re-memorized the report in one of the windows you were taken toWithout this fix, re-running the same memorized report immediately would ignore those changesAlso, any new memorized reports with new names would not have appeared on the list in this window when you returned to it.
  • Fixed a bug when you use the Delete button In the Memorized Reports window, where you got an error message and the report didn't disappear from the list(It actually was deleted though.)

New in DONATION Lite 3.72b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a rare but bad bug in emailing receipts, letters or statements: If you were using mail-merge receipts or letters, and you edited the merged documents, and they were for more than one donor, and then you chose to email them, you would be prompted for whether to save the edited changes before continuing. If you answered Yes, the documents for all donors would be included in the PDF attachment to the first donor receiving an email. Fortunately this had only happened to one user, to the best of our knowledge, because it's a fairly unusual combination of steps.

New in DONATION Lite 3.72 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • All backup filenames now have a time component as well as a date component, such as DONATION-YYYY-MM-DD.HH.MM.SS.DB.GBK, where YYYY-MM-DD is the date the backup was made, and HH.MM.SS is the time.
  • There was a weakness in the handling of bank deposits, in that you couldn't have deposits to two different banks on the same date, and when doing reports on old bank deposits with Reports à Bank Deposit à One Deposit Details, it always showed them as being done on the bank that you last did a bank deposit on. That has been fixed for bank deposits recorded after installing this version.
  • When you start DONATION with an empty database the DONATION Initial Startup window now has an additional option to restore from an Internet backup, if you have one, and know your Unique ID for Internet Backups and the Backup Encryption Password you were using for such backups.
  • On the Reports à Donor sub-menu, the report options Mailing Labels, Mailing Labels with Member/Envelope # and Envelopes all now have a new option to print only for the currently selected donor on the main window.
  • Fixed a minor bug: the VCR buttons in the Reports viewing window were being disabled for Reports à Donation à Details, One Page per Donor, and Reports à Donation à Category Totals, One Page per Donor, when there really were multiple pages. Now they are enabled in that case.
  • In the Help topic for Finding a Donor, clarified that accented characters cannot be found by the normal method of just typing in the Donor List. Instead you have to use the Ctrl+F Find Donor window to do that.
  • Fixed a bug when doing Receipt à Duplicate/Corrected by Number, where if all of the donations included in that receipt had been deleted, so it should have been reprinted with a new amount of $0, the program could crash.

New in DONATION Lite 3.71c (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a bug introduced in version 3.71 - if you were registering for the first time with Tools à Register Online, and you hadn't previously set up an email address with Maintenance à Email Sending Configuration, the email address field would be both empty and uneditable, and you would not be able to submit the registration because the program would ask you to enter an email address!

New in DONATION Lite 3.71b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fix a bug added recently: If you are using the evaluation version, and from the Evaluation and Licensing window that comes up when you start the program, you click "Request License Key" or "Request Key for Extension of Evaluation Period", the program crashes with an error message.
  • Some improvements to the messaging if you try to do a backup or restore on a drive letter that is not available (e.g. a USB memory key). Also improvements to various other bits of messaging in the program.

New in DONATION Lite 3.71 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Added a Copy Prev button to the One Date Batch Entry window. For donors who give the same amount each week, that allows you to quickly copy in that amount as the current date's donation.
  • Also on the One Date Batch Entry window, changed the hotkey for Split All from Alt+T to Alt+P.
  • Added a Database à Import à From Geminon menu option, for importing data directly from a Geminon database file.
  • Added a menu option Maintenance à Change Password à Read Only Password, that allows you to set a Read Only Password. Entering DONATION with that password means you can view data and reports, and create letters etc., but not change any data, generate receipts (other than sample ones) etc.
  • The top sub-report in Reports à Bank Deposit à One Deposit Details, showing the details, had somehow become too narrow, causing longer values in the Cheque # / Paid By field to be cut off. Made it the proper width again so that would not happen.
  • Fixed some problems that can happen in the installation program if you are installing into a non-standard location for the program files, or re-installing to one location when a prior install went to a different location.

New in DONATION Lite 3.70b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Fixed a bug where if you move or resize the main window after it opens, and then do something that causes the data in the main window to be re-retrieved (like changing the working year, or restoring a backup) the window goes back to the position and size it was when it first opened.

New in DONATION Lite 3.70 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • When you are emailing receipts, letters or statements (but only mail-merge receipts, not the regular built-in ones), or emailing newsletters, you now have the option of inserting merge fields into the Subject line and text Body of the emails, as well as in the merged document (for receipts, letters and statements) that is being attached as a PDF. That lets you personalize those emails.
  • Also when you are emailing receipts, letters or statements, or emailing newsletters, you can send the Body of the email as HTML, if you are very familiar with it, by having "" (without the quotes) as the very first thing in the Body, and ending it with "". Of course, other appropriate changes have to be made to make it valid HTML that will display well! HTML body text can be viewed in a web browser with a new Show in Web Browser button that appears if the body starts with "".
  • In the mail-merge editor, the default template documents installed by the program now show thin grey dotted borders around all table cells, to help you see how the document is structured and assist in any editing you do. Those borders disappear when you print the merged document, save it to PDF, or email it - they are only visible on the screen. For existing edited documents where those borders are not shown, they can be added with a new menu option Edit à Show Table Borders on Screen.
  • Fix a bug where if a mail-merge template document is over 32K in size, any merge codes after that point are ignored when you do the merge.
  • For reports that prompt for something (like a date, or range of dates) added a Rerun button to the report-viewing window, that lets you respecify those prompted-for values, and redisplay the report with your new values.
  • Made the report viewing window resizable.
  • For Canadian (English, French only and bilingual) corrected or duplicate/replacement receipts, that create a new receipt with a new number and reprint the existing one with a $0 amount, the new receipt is now displayed first, before the reprinted replaced original. That should avoid some confusion.
  • If you were correcting or replacing a receipt for Canada, and you told it not to change the receipt status, and you had changed the number of donations included in the receipt from one to more than one or vice versa, there was a bug. The bug was that it didn't change the wording "Date of donation: [date]" to "Year of donations: [year]" or vice versa as the number of included donations changed.
  • In Reports à Donor à Addresses and Address by Member/Envelope Number, added the email address to the report.
  • Added Reports à Donor à Contact Information, that shows the name, phone number and email address for each donor, or each donor with donations within a specified range of dates.
  • Fixed a bug: The French-only built-in receipts had a number printing at the top right of the page that did not belong there.
  • Fixed a bug in the Bank Deposit details report (available from the Maintenance à Create Bank Deposits window, or via Reports à Bank Deposit à One Deposit Details). The bug was that the Summary by Paid By sub-report within the report could include amounts for donations that should have been excluded, because their donation category had no configured matching accounting account.
  • Fixed a subtle bug that appeared in three reports under Reports à Donor: Mailing Labels, Mailing Labels with Member/Envelope #, and Envelopes. The bug was that they had an invisible field total_amount, which could be filtered on or exported, which was always the total donations for that donor in the current year. It should have been the total donations within the selected range of dates, if you chose to only generate labels or envelopes for donors with donations within a selected range of dates. That has been corrected.
  • Added a Save SQL button to the reports-viewing window, which can be used in the process of Loading and Saving SQL for Reports.
  • Fixed a problem introduced by version 3.69b, where if the program tries to send an email and is unsuccessful, if it offers to show you a log with the error, that log may not be informative (because it was actually the log of the wrong action).
  • Fixed an inconsistency between the program itself and the installation program about how they find the program's Data Directory - a couple of users were finding that the different methods used, which we thought always gave the same answer, did not do so.
  • Improved the wording in the Evaluation and Licensing window (accessed via Tools à Request or Install License Key) when you are already licensed. If it tells you that your eligibility for support and upgrades has expired, and you need to pay to renew that, it makes it clear that this is "according to your most recently installed license key", which may or may not be correct. (You might have paid more recently, but just not requested, received and installed an updated license key yet.)
  • Fixed a bug in Letters à Email Newsletters, where the program would crash after a successful set of emails, if you answered "Yes" when it reported on how many emails it sent and asked you whether to close that window now.
  • In the One Date Batch Entry window, in the Category drop-down, moved "" to be above the empty row, so if you have no default 2nd or 3rd donation categories set in the Options window for batch entry, you use Split Donor, and you try to use the down arrow on your keyboard to move to your desired category, it doesn't immediately find "" and pop up the window for adding a donation category. (Selecting categories by their first letter is faster anyways: see Keyboard Shortcuts.)
  • Added some content to the Help page on the Data Directory, to avoid sensible confusions about the Data Directory itself versus its Data subdirectory, and about the "Documents" versus "Public Documents" subdirectory under C:\Users\Public in recent versions of Windows.
  • Hopefully fixed a problem that occurred very occasionally (we believe on 64-bit computers) when the installation program tried to install the novaPDF PDF printer, and it would not install, giving the message "Error 1 installing novaPDF".
  • Fixed a bug that only occurred on a few reports where the VCR-style paging controls could be disabled on multiple-page reports. (They are only supposed to be disabled on reports that are only one page long.)
  • Enhanced an error message for a rare situation where the novaPDF printer can't write to its settings file, to explain how to resolve the problem.

New in DONATION Lite 3.69b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • In the internal mail-merge editor, split the Insert a Page Break menu option into three sub-menu options under that: At Start of Document, At Current Cursor Position, and At End of Document. This was done because in some mail-merge documents, particularly receipts, inserting the cursor at the apparent start or end of the document and using the existing Insert a Page Break menu option didn't always work properly at all.
  • Improved the messages you receive if the program tries to send an email and is unsuccessful, to be clearer and more helpful about what the problem likely is, and how to fix it.

New in DONATION Lite 3.69 (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Made a number of improvements to the File à One Date Donation Entry (Batch Entry) window:
  • The Options window has new drop-down lists for First split donor category and Second split donor category, that control the donation categories for rows for donors added by the Split Donor button.
  • There is a new Split All button on the actual data entry window, that brings up a prompt to select a donation category, and then adds one row for each displayed donor, with an empty Amount and the selected Category.
  • The Add Donor button now works, bringing up a window on which you can add a new donor and then continue entering the batch of donations.
  • All controls on the Options window now have accelerators
  • Added a note in the Help topic Non-Receiptable Donors and Donations to clarify that the codes that can make donors and donations not be included in receipts are case-sensitive, so for instance while "Non-Receiptable" works, "Non-receiptable" or "non-receiptable" would not work.
  • In the Help topic Pledges in Donation, added a new sub-section on "Entry of Donations towards Pledges" to clarify that aspect.

New in DONATION Lite 3.68b (Jun 19, 2015)

  • Added the ability to specify a range of dates to report on in Reports à Donation à Summary by Date and Category.
  • Made an improvement in Reports à Donation à Summary by Dollar Ranges so that adding a Filter doesn't run the risk of breaking the report by making the dollar ranges get out of order and sometimes be duplicated.
  • With the new ability to configure an alternate HTML editor, with some external editors the file format could be somewhat damaged, causing merges to not work properly, if you returned to the built-in editor after saving changes in the external editor, and then did not make any further changes in the internal editor and save them. That has been fixed.
  • The program was making a check on startup that it could find a unique identifier for your computer, and giving a message to you if it could not do so. A few users were getting that message, so some additional code was added to find other sorts of unique identifiers if the original version wasn't working.

New in DONATION Lite 3.49 (May 16, 2013)

  • Fixed a bug when making database backups in the Network Client version only (introduced, I think, in version 3.45d) where you first get an incorrect error message about the database file not existing, and then in the window for specifying the path to backup to, the backup path is shown with no filename component, and you thus have to type that in yourself.
  • When converting data from Membership Plus, a check was added to ignore completely empty Fund rows (which get converted to donation categories in DONATION). Previously they would have caused the conversion to halt. There could also be problems where there were donations in the Membership Plus database with no matching donor, again causing the conversion to halt. That was resolved by adding in a fake donor with a Business Name like "Missing Donor 123", to attach those donations to. (One fake donor is added for each internal donor number in Membership Plus that there were donations for, with no matching donor.)
  • Fixed a weird problem in reports such as Reports. Details and Summary, which have a details section followed by a summary section. In that report, if it was more than one page long, and you used either the Filter or the Sort button, the summary section disappeared from the view on your screen. However, if you printed it, it was fine, and after printing, the summary section reappeared on your screen.

New in DONATION Lite 3.48 (May 16, 2013)

  • Added new options for users with a Receipt Style of "U.S.A." in the Maintenance Receipt Options window, for whether donors receive "intangible religious benefits" for their donations, which then affects the wording on the receipts.
  • For mail-merge receipts for users with a Receipt Style of "U.S.A." in the Maintenance Receipt Options window, there is a new mail-merge field available, ReligiousBenefits, which can be used to determine whether to include some variant wording in the receipts.
  • In the Reprint Range window, added a checkbox that can be used for marking all of the reprinted receipts as "Corrected", when that is appropriate.

New in DONATION Lite 3.47 (May 16, 2013)

  • When converting data from Membership Plus, a check was added for there being donors ("members" in Membership Plus) with the same internal unique ID, which would prevent them from being imported into DONATION. As long as those duplicate donors have no contributions, the import will continue, just skipping the 2nd one.
  • When you pop up a calendar control for a date field, previously the only way to get rid of it without making a selection was by pressing ESC. Now you can get rid of it by clicking the same popup button again, or clicking back in the date field, or in most other places on the same window.
  • Made Reports 'Donor' Old Donors much faster (previously it could take multiple minutes if you had quite a lot of data).
  • Fixed a problem during a re-installation, if you have configured your database to be located on a USB memory key, and the key containing your database has not been inserted into your computer. Now it will prompt you to do that before continuing the installation.

New in DONATION Lite 3.46e (May 16, 2013)

  • Made some changes to the program's License Agreement, and various places in both this Help file and the program's website, to clarify the following existing policies: Older versions of the program are never made available, so users whose paid support and upgrades eligibility period has expired need to pay an appropriate fee to download and re-install the current version of the program, unless they keep their own secure permanent copy of the installation program from before their upgrades eligibility period ended, which they can use instead. Also, renamed the "Full License" fee to the "Initial Purchase" fee, for clarity.
  • If you try to delete an existing donation on the program's main window by either changing the Amount to $0, or deleting the Amount, you are now given a message explaining how to delete donations, by using the Delete button.

New in DONATION Lite 3.46d (May 16, 2013)

  • When converting data from Membership Plus, if negative dollar amounts are found in donations, they are now not imported because they are not allowed in DONATION. However a note about that specific skipped donation is put into the file of messages about the conversion that is shown to the user. Previously negative dollar amounts would cause the conversion to crash.
  • Fixed something in the Database 'Import' All Data menu option that would prevent it from working correctly - generally a "Foreign Key Validation" error would come up.