The installation consists of five diskettes. Before starting the installation process be sure to shut down any other programs that are running. To start the installation, place installation disk 1 into drive A (it may be drive B on your PC) and run A:\SETUP.EXE (or B:\SETUP.EXE as the case may be).

Once SETUP.EXE starts you will be prompted to jump through several hoops. First you will see the Welcome Screen. It displays some legalese that you should read before clicking Continue.

The next screen displays the name information that is assigned to your PC (it finds this in the Windows Registry). You should update this data if needed. The Union Organizer is a single user product and it may be used only on this PC. To continue, clic k OK.

The next screen lets you choose the installation directory. The default folder is c:\Union Organizer - but you may change this if you like. To pick a different folder, click Change Folder - a chooser dialog will appear... when you are satisfied with you r choice of directory click the big button with the picture of a computer.

Now the Program Group Dialog will appear. This determines the option name for The Union Organizer that you will see on the Start Menu. The default group is "Union Organizer". Click Continue.

The installation will now transfer all required files to your hard drive. You will be prompted in turn for each of the remaining four diskettes. After the last disk you will see this screen:

If this is the original installation then leave all boxes checked and click Continue. If this is a reinstallation you may need to uncheck all or some of the options before going on. See the following section "Reinsta llation and Backups" for more information.

Finally, the License Agreement will appear. Please read it carefully. When you close the License Agreement Window (click its close button - upper right corner) a dialog will pop up to tell you that Setup Completed Successfully. Click OK and remove disk five. The Union Organizer is installed.

To start The Union Organizer click the Start Button, choose Programs, and find Union Organizer, then The Union Organizer.

Should you ever find that you need to reinstall The Union Organizer, due to a system crash or the like, please note - the installation program has two parts: the Application Installation, and the Data Installation. Near the end of the Setup Program, the Data Installation Screen is displayed (see the previous section). On this screen you will find check-off boxes for the various tables used by The Union Organizer. Naturally, if your data is not damaged you will not want to overwrite it, th us, you should uncheck the box for any table you want to keep. For each box checked, the corresponding table will be installed, overwriting the existing table.

Each of the eleven check boxes correspond to a different set of data - but all represent data that you, the user, have entered. The first is the most critical. It is the employee/membership data. If this box is checked, all data will be erased. The system tables will be replaced with new (blank) tables. The next three are th e Building, Department, and Job Title lists, and the remainder are all for various options that you set in the course of using The Union Organizer. Again, you must uncheck any box for which you want to keep the existing data.

Note that even in the best of circumstances reinstallation may create data conflicts that result in unexpected data problems. This is due to the complex relationships between the various tables and the validation rules that are based on data stored in the tables. Ideally, you should either check all of the boxes, or uncheck all of the boxes. Choosing some combination of checked and unchecked boxes should be a last resort.

The best way to reinstall The Union Organizer is to maintain regular backups of your entire system and recover it from that backup.

The Union Organizer does not provide any data backup utilities but you should take it upon yourself to learn how to do regular backups.

Modern PC's can hold so much data that backups can no longer be seen as a casual subject. If you don't have a Zip Drive, Tape Drive, or other high capacity backup drive, then get one. If The Union Organizer has become damaged, then it is likely that the data is damaged as well. You can reinstall the application but the installation disks cannot rescue your data.

Backup your hard drive often.

In general, if you back up your hard drive often, you should try to recover The Union Organizer from the Backup Tape or cartridge (etc), rather than reinstalling it (see the previous section).