Report Writer inspection report files take up room over time, particularly when lots of images or attachments are included. To save space or make your 3D backups smaller and faster, we recommend periodically moving older reports from your 3D data folder. We particularly recommend archiving prior report files out of the 3D data folder when backups grow to occupy more than one .zip file. One might also optionally move or remove these reports from the hard drive as well if desired.

Note: Before deleting any data files we recommend using Office Management File > Backup All Files option to back up all existing data as a precaution. You should be making regular backups periodically. See our prior Tips article on  Safeguarding your important inspection data.

An easy way to archive older reports is to simply copy the desired .R3D files from your data folder to another folder or to other removable media, (such as an external USB) and/or cloud backup location, and remove them from the 3D data folder on the hard drive. Moving report .r3d files from your data folder does not remove their associated job information from the Office Management database, allowing one to easily look up prior job information. The report files copied or backed up elsewhere may also be opened again later either by navigating to them or copying a specific file back to your data folder. However the moved files just won’t be using space in your data folder or included in future backups, making those take longer and grow larger.

LOCATE REPORT .R3D FILES:

• To easily access your data folder, in the Report Writer, click Preferences > Preferences, and choose the File Locations tab. Click the Open folder button for your Data files to launch that location in Explorer. Cancel Preferences window when done.
• Close any open reports in your 3D Software to release file locks.
• In Explorer, you may select or highlight the items you want to cut/copy/paste (see Use File Explorer to Move Files). Individual inspection reports files are saved as .r3d type files in your data folder. Generally you wouldn’t want to remove other types of data files.

USE FILE EXPLORER TO MOVE FILES:

• Use View in File Explorer toolbar to display file Details, which will neatly list files and show various attributes.
• Use the Sort in File Explorer toolbar to “Group by” type and/or “Sort by” by date. (or right-click blank space to the right of the file listing to access Group and Sort options. Locate the section of .r3d report files.
• Highlight and select the desired files you wish to move. You may hold Shift to select the first and last files in an list of adjacent files to select them at once, or hold CTRL key while selecting specific multiple files. We’d recommend archiving prior year reports out of your data folder each year.
• Once desired files are selected, right-click on one of them or use toolbar options to Cut/Copy to clipboard. TIP: It is faster to first “cut and paste” files to a different folder on the same drive rather than copying them or cutting and pasting to a different drive. Cut and paste is faster than copy and paste (within the same drive/partition) because it only updates the file’s address in the file system directory rather than re-writing the data. Windows simply updates the file’s file table entry to point to the new folder, leaving the actual file data on the disk sectors untouched. Whereas copy-paste must create a complete new, physical duplicate of the file. Cutting is not faster across different drives since the system must copy the data to the new drive, then delete the original, which takes similar time to a standard copy operation. And in a Copy-Paste Operation, copying always involves reading every single byte of data from the source and writing it entirely to a new location, regardless of whether the files are on the same drive or not, which uses memory proportional to file size.
• Use File Explorer to navigate to and/or create a new folder as desired into which to paste the files. Right-click within that folder or use the toolbar Paste option to transfer the file listing.
• You may wish to later Copy and Paste the transferred files to an additional external storage location or cloud location as an additional backup. (Or simply maintain a separate folder on your computer for storing older files to exclude them from future data backups made from within 3D, but make sure you do store backup copies off your drive as well or retain older 3backup.zip files containing the moved files until you no longer need them).

Once there fewer report .r3d type files in your data folder, future backups made using File > Backup All Files in 3D will be smaller and faster.  Your job records remain present in Office Management so that you may easily look up prior jobs information when needed and use existing contacts with new jobs.

HOW TO OPEN A REPORT .R3D FILE ARCHIVED ON OTHER MEDIA
If you later need to access a particular inspection report file you archived:

• Locate and display the job in Office Management.
• If “Open Inspection” is not available for the job, that means its report file is not present in your main data folder. Note the “Job Name” that generally designates the report filename.  That is usually the filename you would locate in your archived report files.
• Insert your media containing the report .r3d file into the drive as applicable.
• You may (a) Switch to the Report Writer, and use File > Open Inspection option to navigate to the drive or report folder where your inspection files are stored, locate the desired inspection report file, and open it there.
• Or (b) alternately copy the .r3d file back into your 3D data folder and open the file again normally using Office Management.
• If you wish to re-use an older original report as a base for a new inspection, after opening the report, use File > Save As to save a copy of the report to match your new report Job Name. Afterward, close the report and be certain to re-open it from from your new job in Office Management to link the renamed file to the new job. You may need to reselect narratives that previously merged information into the report to re-merge the new job information, and/or remove and reattach any Attachments, or edit those directly to update them appropriate for the new job.

ARCHIVING FINAL PDF FILES
One may prefer to print and archive final PDF report printouts periodically instead, after which may may also either archive or simply remove any older original .r3d report files that are no longer needed from the 3D data folder. If you create separate PDFs to retain for each report as recommended, you may want to back up or archive those PDF files similarly to archiving .r3d files- by opening the folder where your final PDFs are stored in File Explorer, selecting the desired group of PDF files, and copying and storing them onto alternate media or a backup drive for safekeeping.

Note that PDFs are not backed up by the 3D backup feature, since PDF (Portable Document Format) is not a 3D software program format but are basically equivalent to final “printouts”, similar to printing to an actual printer. So we recommend backing those up separately. PDFs files do not require the 3D program to be opened, which means they are a particularly good way to archive reports as they looked when delivered to clients for safe keeping.

PDF files also retain their exact original final “printed” look. You would need to also retain the source report .r3d files however, if you want to be able to open inspections in 3D software, for instance to use an older report as a starting base to a reinspect a property previously inspected, as mentioned previously, or should you need to issue a revision or corrected report for some reason. You may wish to retain and archive both original .r3d files and PDF files until the statute of limitations in your area expires, particularly if you archived additional files, photos, or inspector notes with the report that you didn’t include in your final report.

Now that you know how easy it is to manage older report files by archiving them and removing them from your software data folder, you may want to archive older report files every year, every six months, quarter, or perhaps only every few years. Or whenever you decide using the Backup All Files option in Office Management to do a full backup of all your existing data files starts taking a little too long or too large for your liking. Also be sure to open your 3dbackup.zip files after creating them to ensure they open properly to verify the backup was successfully created.