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question for sonya and doug
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Hi! I signed up for the CM organizer trial and really liked it for the most part. I accidentally let the account expire before paying for the sign up. I have two questions that my husband needs answered before we continue on with this service.
1) If i pay now, is all the data I already entered and saved during the trial period still there?
2) Is there anyway that the saved data can be downloaded to my PC, so we can have an electronic copy or CD copy of it?
Thanks in advance,
Amy Webb
Well, I’m not Sonya or Doug, and I’m sure you will want to wait for the official word….
That said…
1) Yes your data should still be there. They hold it for quite a while.
2) The only way I know how to save the information is to print the reports to a pdf (or copy-paste to another document)
Again, I realize you will want the official word….
thanks, suzukimom! hubby wants to know how useful this will be to us in long term for record keeping and storage…and if it’s wiser to just lay out money for software that we’ll own and can save, back-up etc.
Yes, I hear you there! That had been a consideration that I had too. That said, the other things I tried just didn’t work as well and as easily as the CM Organizer. It isn’t perfect of course, but Sonya and Doug are great at hearing what people would like, and do have a programming team working on things.
I did some thinking while I was figuring it out. Long-term saving, paper will work for me. Even if I bought a program, it could easily go obsolete, and I’d end up with data that I can’t access. (I’ve used computers since the FIRST home computers came out (I’m talking 1975!) and I know how quickly programs, hardware, etc go out of date and become unusable. For instance, my palm-pilot is mostly useless to me now because my Win7 computer doesn’t have drivers to sync it.
For short-term, I am just using trust. Doug and Sonya do make money from keeping our data safe and having the program, so it is in their self-interest to do a good job on that. I don’t think the organizer would suddenly disappear without their warning well ahead of time. The only thing I can see is some sort of technical problem – which can happen at home too. And I already know that we don’t back-up often enough at home…. and I’m sure they back-up regularily.
So for me, I am letting them take care of that while I enjoy how well it works with what we do (and don’t do!). Other people make other decisions, and that is fair too.
Mamaweb – I will let Doug and Sonya speak to the organizer question, but I can offer this piece of information. I have owned 3 different pieces of software for recordkeeping over the years – and I never felt they were working for me for the CM approach. They were all too rigid and too textbook oriented. Two that I used that I did not find CM friendly were Homeschool Tracker and EduTrack, way too busy for me, especially as I wanted to keep my record keeping simple, and CM like.
I like the organiser because not only can I put a textbook in if I want to, I can add all the books we will use, and if we have a day where things don’t get done, it is all still there for me the next day. As for the reports, I print off each quarter and semester and then final year one. Because we are doing high school and I wanted to do a transcript, I bought Inga Canon’s Transcript Pro software which has taken care of the transcript as I have done each year, at the end of the four years I print off a finished transcript.
I understand your husband’s concerns, mine had similar concerns, but he has seen how well it works and so he is happy, especially as I have the transcript one as well. Anyway, I am sure you will figure it out and find something that works for you – just wanted to let you know my experience.
Hi Amy,
Yes, the data is saved for a while on the Organizer adn will be able to be retreived. I can’t answer to your second question. However, I print out daily for them to check off; I don’t keep those. I print out monthly and then a yearly detailed and attendance report and place in my Homeschool notebook for that year.
I use the summary report (I don’t print) and the detailed one combined to create my written yearly summary of progress for the children; it’s required by my state, but I don’t have to turn it in.
I’ve offered to sacrifice and let the subscription go and go back to paper only during bad economic bouts, but my husband refuses to let me as he knows how it simplifies my HS’ling and he believes it is worth the cost as an assist to me. I’ve used it for 2 years now (going into my 3rd) and try to advertise to others about it as much as possible!
Rachel
Wow, you all did such a great job answering that I don’t need to say much!
1) If i pay now, is all the data I already entered and saved during the trial period still there?
Yes, everything will be there and ready to use right where you left off. We will keep your data around for at least a year if your account is inactive. That way you can come and go as you please without feeling locked in.
2) Is there anyway that the saved data can be downloaded to my PC, so we can have an electronic copy or CD copy of it?
We don’t have a download of the data in raw form because it probably wouldn’t be much use to you that way. The important thing is to keep your school records safe and there are some good ways to do that. The easiest way is to simply print one of the CM Organizer reports on a regular basis and keep it in a notebook. If you want to store your records electronically you can print those reports to a PDF file instead of paper and then store and back them up however you like.
The CM Organizer was built to automatically keep multiple backups in multiple locations. We go way beyond the kind of backups you would normally do with your computer at home. For more details see our article Are my school records safe in the CM Organizer?
You might also be interested in our article 5 Reasons the CM Organizer Is an Online Service for a comparison of the CM Organizer and software you install on your computer.
Thanks so much everyone for your input! That was really helpful – esp missingtheshire b/c i was looking at those exact software programs and thinking the same thing….this is way more than i need and way more rigid than i want. it didn’t seem to fit the CM way at all.
This is our first year really going full after the CM methods and i’m still trying to get up and running smoothly. I really like the organizer, though I have run into an occasional blip that I didn’t know how to fix. Thanks everyone, again.
Also, I’d like to thank Sonya and Doug for running an excellent, encouraging, and USEFUL site!
You said:
though I have run into an occasional blip that I didn’t know how to fix.
When that happens, feel free to ask, as some of us have figured out how to do a few things here and there…
I really like the organizer, though I have run into an occasional blip that I didn’t know how to fix. Thanks everyone, again.
Feel free to contact us anytime if you get stuck.
Also, I’d like to thank Sonya and Doug for running an excellent, encouraging, and USEFUL site!
Also a nod to Karen and others helping out mostly behind the scenes. 🙂
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