Tech Support FAQ's

New Computer/Data Transfer

  • If you are adding a new computer to your existing network, you do not need to install Office Center on an individual machine; all machines should be networked to your server. Please see Networking Instructions.
  • If you have a new computer and want transfer your Office Center data to a new machine please follow the instructions below. The version date of your Office Center master CD will be the version you are installing on your new machine. If you have purchased any updates after your original purchase of Office Center, you can install the most current update after you have installed your master installation CD. Be sure to close out of Office Center before installing an update.
  • For security purposes, Office Center will prompt you to call our Offices to "Register" the program. This will happen any time the program is installed on a new machine. Give us a quick call for your verification number. Note: you must be in front of your computer to register. You will have eight times to access the program before you are blocked. We are opened 9-5 Monday-Friday Pacific Standard Time. (800)729-4445.
  1. Locate your Office Center Master installation CD.
  2. On the new computer, insert the CD into the drive, in a moment it should begin to run the installation (click install or continue)
  3. After Installation is complete open Office Center
  4. Take your back up from your old machine and restore it on your new machine (if you don't know how to make a back up, click here for instructions)
  5. To restore your back up data on your new machine, plug your USB port device into your machine
  6. Go into Office Center to the opening screen and select "Disk Options" on the toolbar
  7. Select "Restore A Previous Back Up"
  8. A warning message will come up telling you that you are about to overwrite your current information.
  9. If you are ready to proceed, click "Yes".
  10. Check the appropriate boxes for the programs you are going to restore
  11. Where it reads "Restore From What Location", type in the drive letter for this machine's USB drive, then colon, then back slash. For example: E:\ (there is a difference between forward slash and back slash on your keyboard) Check that the information is there by going into Accounts Receivable. If not, please read Troubleshooting Back up/ Restore problems
     

Registration

Registration is a normal function of Office Center. If you are getting a message to call Emerging Technologies for a registration, this has occurred for the following reasons:

  1. You ordered the software within the last three months
  2. You ordered a replacement Master installation program CD within the last three months
  3. You are running on a network and have lost the network connection to a remote machine

For reasons 1 & 2 above please call Emerging Technologies to get a verification number and complete the registration process. It takes just a minute. You will have 8 times to exit and enter the program. You will not be blocked out of the program unless you exit and enter the program 8 times before calling us. Please keep in mind that our hours are Monday- Friday 9-5pm Pacific Standard Time (800) 729-4445. Please note that you have to be in front of the computer to do the registration. The identification number will change each time you go into the registration area; therefore writing down the number to call later will not work. The verification number we give you is good for one time only so there is no need to keep the number. If you are running our Timeclock program, this program needs to be off while doing the registration. If you are running Office Center on a network, registration should occur on the server machine, while the other machines are exited out of Office Center.

 

Year End Statements to Parents for Taxes

First, make sure your federal tax identification number is inputted into the system:
  1. In Accounts Receivable, go up to: "Options"
  2. Go to "Message Definitions"
  3. In Individual Charge/Credit Summaries, type in your Federal Tax number. This number will appear at the bottom of the year end statement report.
To Print the Year End Statements:
  1. In Accounts Receivable, go to 'Print'
  2. Accounting Reports
  3. Select 'Individual Summaries'. Select 'multiple families' to print for all families. If you want just a single family, go to their family folder and then select print.

 

Restoring Data from Past Years

Of course you don't want to overwrite your current data, you just need some information from a prior year. There are a couple different ways you can go about it. You can make a copy of Office Center and paste it to your desktop. Or, as many folks do, they purchase the multisite program that allows them to keep multiple copies of Office Center databases and access them quickly. You have probably seen the red schoolhouse icon on the opening screen of Office Center. This is the Multisite module.  This comes in handy after many years of using Office Center and doing many year end closings. This is a good long term option. Or, follow the steps below for a quick solution. To restore old data: (It is always suggested to make a back up of your current data first before restoring old data to avoid unforeseen mistakes)
  1. Go to the My Computer icon on your desktop
  2. Locate your C drive
  3. Find the folder that says "OC"
  4. Right click over the folder and pick "copy"
  5. Close out screens to desktop
  6. Find an open space on your desktop, Right click with your mouse and pick "paste".
  7. You will see the new OC folder on your desktop. Right click over is and pick "rename"
  8. Rename this folder to "Old OC".
  9. After this click or double click on the new folder and a copy of Office Center will show, just as your current copy.
  10. Follow the steps for restoring data (see restoring data).
  11. After getting the information you need from the old data, close out of the program to avoid confusion as to which version of Office Center is opened.

 

Year End Closings

Unless you are required to do a year end closing, you do not have to in Office Center. When you do a year end closing, you wipe out data from previous years and can no longer see or access that information in your current data. After some years, it is recommended to do a year end closing to lighten up the amount of data your program is carrying. There are several steps involved. Your manual has the written steps, or you can print it out from this link: Year End Closing Instructions

 

Timeclock Archiving

If you use the Office Center Timeclock program, as children clock in and out daily those in and out times start to add up and you may find that your system is slowing down due to carrying a lot of data. You can archive just the in and out times, and you can restore them instantly too. It's simple. Please follow the steps below:

  1.  In Accounts Receivable go up to the word "Timeclock" at the top of the screen.
  2. Select "Timeclock Archives"
  3. Select  "Archive Timeclock Information"
  4.  A date box will appear. You decide what date you would like to put in. All in and out times before that date will be pocketed away in a separate internal folder within the Office Center program. 
If you would like to restore old in/out times:
  1. In Accounts Receivable go up to the word "Timeclock" at the top of the screen.
  2. Select "Timeclock Archives"
  3.  Select "Restore Timeclock information from Archives".

 

Lining up W2 text and Lining up Checks

From opening screen of Office Center select:
  1. System Settings
  2. General System settings under "Check Offsets" you will see "Top" and "Left"
"Top" is for adjusting the text up or down. 0.50 equals about one line space.  Whatever number you have in there, add or subtract by 0.50 to move the line up or down one line.  If the number is set to 0.00, and you want to move it down, use a negative sign. -0.50. A positive number moves the text up, a negative number moves the line down  "Left" is for adjusting the text left or right. A few character spaces are approximately 0.50. Whatever number you have in there, add or subtract by 0.50 to move the text left or right.  If the number is set to 0.00, and you want to move it left, use a negative sign. -0.50.A positive number moves right, a negative number moves left.

 

Index corruption

When index corruption occurs, usually the result of a power failure, a number of "symptoms" may appear. Examples: a customer balance may be wrong, or someone else's balance or data may appear on another family's folder, classroom names are not the right names etc. Data corruption can occur for a number of reasons:
  1. Power outage
  2. Leaving computers on for an extended period of time without rebooting.
  3. Hardware problems, computers freeze.
  4. Viruses
  5. Low level (operating system level) disk formatting problems.
Index corruption can occur in any software program, it is basically a scrambling of information that needs to be reordered. Office Center has a built in routine to reindex the program files and by doing so your data may be reordered to it's proper place. . Follow the steps in order below:

 

Reindexing Office Center:

  1. Turn off all machines in the proper way. If you have the Timeclock program, deactivate it.
  2. If you are running on a network (a group of 2 or more computers connected together that share information) Reboot the server machine only. If you aren't running on a network, turn on your computer.
  3. When you can access Office Center again. Stay on the opening logo screen and select the word "Help" on the top toolbar.
  4. From that menu select "Technical Support"
  5. Then select "Repair All Databases".
     
This begins a "reindexing" process, which usually takes about 15 seconds. This will reorder your database back to the proper order. Go into your program and check to see if the problem is fixed. If so and you are running on a network, go ahead and turn on your other computers, and/or activate your Timeclock program.

 

Backing Up/Restoring Information

If you have an older version of Office Center, that predates 12/2003 you are limited to backing up and restoring on just floppy discs. Many new computers don't even have floppy drives any longer. This is because both floppies and floppy drives are unreliable. We suggest that you update to a newer version of Office Center.  If you have a current or near current version of Office Center, we recommend backing up and restoring to a USB port plug in device. Unlike CD's this method is standardized, meaning you can back up and restore directly to it. With CDs, intermediate software is required to burn directly from a program to a CD. This is not a because of features and functions of Office Center, but rather industry agreements made between hardware and CD making software manufacturers. If you have EASY CD CREATOR, you can burn directly from Office Center creating a back up to, or restore from a CD.
It is less complicated and simplified to use a USB port device. There are many names for this device (and we've heard 'em all) - memory stick, key chain thingy, flash device, removable disk drive, USB port device. Whatever you would like to call it, in order to back up and restore to it, you have to first establish which drive letter your computer recognizes it as. If you already know which drive letter your USB port device is, then follow the instructions below to make a back up. If you do not know how to identify which drive letter your USB port device reads from click here. To make a back up in Office Center:
  1. Plug in the USB Port memory device
  2. on the opening logo screen of Office Center select "Disk Options"
  3. Choose "Back Up to Diskette"
  4. A new screen will appear giving you choices of which programs you want to back up, check the appropriate boxes (see NOTE below).
  5. Where it says "Back up to what location" you will type in the drive letter, colon, and back slash. For example F:\ (there is a difference between the forward slash and back slash on your keyboard) (if you don't know the drive letter read below),
  6. Press the OK button to begin the back up
  7. You may check to see if you've made a good back up by going to your desktop, clicking on the "My computer" icon and clicking on the drive letter that you backed up to. AR.LZH is Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable AP.LZH, SS.LZH etc.
     
NOTE: "System Settings" are your custom settings that you have set up for your center, i.e.,User Access Rights, Passwords, etc.

Restoring Data

Please follow the steps below to restore a back up to a machine. (If you don't know what the drive letter is for the location you are restoring from please read instructions above for: Checking the Name/Letter of your computer drives)
  1. Plug your USB port device into your machine
  2. If you are running on a network, or have the Timeclock program open, close out all other machines and get out of Timeclock and do your restore on the server.
  3. On the opening screen of Office Center select "Disk Options" on the toolbar
  4. Select "Restore A Previous Back Up"
  5. A warning message will come up telling you that you are about to overwrite your current information.
  6. If you are ready to proceed, click "Yes".
  7. Check the appropriate boxes for the programs you are going to restore
  8. Where it says "Restore From What Location", Type in the drive letter for this machine's USB drive, then colon, then back slash. For example: E:\ (there is a difference between forward slash and back slash on your keyboard)
     

How to Check and identify the drive letters on your computer

To check what your USB port drive letter is, please follow the steps below:
  1. Plug in your device to a USB port in your machine
  2. Minimize all programs so you can see your desktop screen with all of your icons
  3. There will be an icon that reads "My Computer" on your desktop, click on it
  4. There will be several drives listed. You will most likely see one named "removable disk"
  5. Identify which drive letter is for your removable device. For example it may be E: or J:
     
Identify and remember the drive letter. Please note that EVERY MACHINE IS DIFFERENT AND WILL BE MOST LIKELY BE A DIFFERENT LETTER ON ANOTHER MACHINE. So, if you are planning on backing up and restoring to two different machines you have to follow these steps again on the other machine to identify the drive letter.

Recommended And Minimum Hardware Requirements

 The recommended hardware requirements of Office Center are based on what is “current” in today’s hardware market.  The minimum hardware requirements typically depend upon the operating system and the presence of antivirus software on the machine.

The recommended hardware on a typical Windows Vista or XP platform with antivirus software is a 1-2 Gigahertz processor(s) with 1 Gigabyte of Ram.   This relatively modest memory configuration will provide you with optimum operating performance and it will ensure that the operating system is not required to do a lot of unnecessary disk “thrashing” to accomplish its daily tasks.  You will have plenty of memory to open your email program, open up your browser, and to still operate Office Center efficiently during the day.

When talking about the minimum recommended hardware requirements for various operating systems, it is important to understand that each operating system has it’s own ‘sweet spot” where it achieves optimal operating performance.  Each operating system needs a certain amount of memory and hard disk space to work with in order to complete typical tasks.

The hardware analogy that seems to best convey these hardware requirements is to think of your computer as a self contained small office, where there is a secretary (a microprocessor), a desk (memory) where the secretary works, and a filing cabinet (a hard drive) where the various papers of information are stored throughout the day.   A slower and somewhat older secretary (microprocessor) with a large desk (memory) can often get more done in a day than a younger, faster processor, with smaller desk (less memory).  That is because the smaller desk can only hold a few papers and then the secretary has to get up from his desk to put some of the papers away into the filing cabinet before he gets other papers out of the filing cabinet.  Each time he has to get up from his desk to put something back into the filing cabinet before he takes something out, and that takes extra time.  The amount of actual filing cabinet space that Office Center requires is very small, taking up only a couple of folders in a typical filing cabinet.   Virtually any size filing cabinet (hard drive) will provide enough room to install Office Center.  Office Center uses about 20-30 megabytes of disk space for a typical center depending on the number of students, and how many years of data you wish to store.   The desk space of your machine, the amount of memory in the machine, will have the greatest impact on the performance of your computer.  The larger the desk space, the fewer trips the secretary has to make to the filing cabinet, and the faster the work gets done.  A small amount of desk space (memory) can hamstring even the fastest of microprocessors if the microprocessor is spending all its time filing and retrieving documents on the hard drive.

A minimum hardware configuration for a current Vista Service Pack 1 and XP Service Pack 2 operating system is 512MB of Ram and one 600MHZ processor, with a 20MB hard drive.    Minimum hardware for a Windows 2000 machine with Service Pack 4 is 256 MB of ram, 400 mhz processor and 20 megabytes of disk space.  The minimum hardware required for a Windows 98 or 95 machine is a 200 MHZ processor with 64 megs of ram and 20 megabytes of disk space.

The optimal XP Service Pack 2 and VISTA Service Pack 1 operating systems will have a 1-2 Ghz processor(s), 1 Gigabytes of Ram, a hard drive that is rated in Gigabytes, rather than megabytes, and that has at least 1 Gigabyte of free hard disk space.  The optimal Windows 2000/Service Pack 4 machine will have at least 750 Megs of ram, a 400MHZ processor and a Gigabyte of hard drive space.

Spyware Removal Programs

Spyware is the broad term that defines software installed without users' knowledge or permission, and covers everything from relatively benign adware that tracks Web sites visited to malicious key loggers that record every keystroke in the hope of stealing passwords and financial account info. Spyware has been blamed for slowing down PCs, making them unusable on the Web due to incessant pop-ups, and for causing large fractions -- 25 to 50 percent -- of all help desk calls to the likes of Dell and Microsoft. If you aren't already running one or more of these spyware detection programs, do yourself a favor and download at least one of these programs and use it regularly. All of them are good programs. The first two are freeware. The Spy Sweeper program is a (TRIAL) version that will also remove most current spyware and is a commercial package that is better at finding the leftover "tracks" of spyware that the other two tend to miss. The Microsoft package runs on Vista, XP, 2000 and 2003 only.

Ad Aware SE Personal

Spybot Search And Destroy

Spy Sweeper By Webroot (Excellent Antivirus/AntiSpyware package)

Microsoft's Windows Defender ( Windows XP, 2000 and 2003)