Stupid Software Tricks: The Convekta Users.dat File

Convekta programs -- CT-Art, Chess Tactics for Beginners, Chess Tactics for Intermediate Players, etc. -- do not provide an interface to back up and restore your progress, statistics, and missed problems as you work through a problem set. With a little effort, however, you can back up the user data yourself.

This will be old news to many -- I see that phorku mentioned it in a comment to one of Blue Devil Knight's posts -- but if you don't poke around in your software, you may not be aware of this trick.

Why would you want to back up your progress? I can think of several reasons:
- You can review missed problems without changing statistics or losing a record of the problems you missed
- You can work on your tactics on multiple computers -- your desktop and laptop, or your home and work computers
- You can move to a new computer without losing your progress
- Hard drives crash!

It's pretty simple in practice. All progress for all users of a particular program is stored in the "Users.dat" file, which is found in the program directory of each Convekta program. To save your progress, just make a copy of the Users.dat file; to restore saved progress, replace the current Users.dat with a copy of your saved Users.dat. It goes without saying: be careful when you replace this file! I usually keep the last few backups, just to be safe; and rather than overwriting the current Users.dat file, I rename it, so that I still have it if I make a mistake.

For example, here's the process I use when I review my missed problems after finishing a circle:
- I make a backup copy of the Users.dat file. I try to name the backup something useful, e.g. "Circle 20.02 Users.dat."
- I review the missed problems.
- Before I start the next circle, or before I do another review of the missed problems, I restore the backup copy: I replace Users.dat with a copy of the backup Users.dat.