Backup4all 4.9 released


Today we’ve released a new major version of Backup4all, 4.9.291. Depending on your edition you can go ahead and download it here: Download Backup4all 4.9
This release contains an important feature that improves email notifications as we’ve added a new encryption type, TLS. Since the email notification feature is included in Backup4all Professional and Backup4all Portable, updating is not necessary for Lite and Standard editions (you can see a comparison of features here).

Below you can read details regarding the new features and fixes introduced in the previous 2 builds as well:

  • TLS encryption. The email notification feature had before the option to choose only ‘SSL’ as a type of encryption for the SMTP server. With this new release we’ve added also ‘TLS’ so now for the SMTP server settings you’ll have the option to choose between SSL, TLS or None. You can access this new option by going to ‘Tools->Options->Email’ and checking the ‘Enable email notifications’ box.Email notificationsThe newly introduced encryption protocol, TLS, allows Backup4all to communicate with your SMTP server in a way that prevents eavesdropping and tampering. Since this communication can operate either with or without TLS (or SSL), it was necessary to introduce also the ‘None’ option. Before choosing the TLS option for your communication make sure that your server supports it.
  • Environment variables in email notifications (title and message). When email notifications are enabled after every backup job that completes an email will be sent in case of a certain action (job finished with warnings, errors or success). Depending on each action an email can be configured. We’ve introduced now the possibility to use environment variables in the title and/or body of the email. Environment variables are part of the operating system and you can think of them as shortcuts to predefined locations. For example the %TEMP% environment will refer to the location of temporary files. Below you can find a list of environment variables and their actual paths:
    Variable Windows Vista/7/8
     %ALLUSERSPROFILE% C:\ProgramData
     %APPDATA% C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming
     %COMPUTERNAME% {computername}
     %COMMONPROGRAMFILES% C:\Program Files\Common Files
     %COMMONPROGRAMFILES(x86)% C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files
     %HOMEDRIVE% C:
     %HOMEPATH% \Users\{username}
     %LOCALAPPDATA% C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local
     %LOGONSERVER% \\{domain_logon_server}
     %PATH% C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;
     %PATHEXT% .com;.exe;.bat;.cmd;.vbs;.vbe;.js;.jse;.wsf;.wsh;.msc
     %PROGRAMDATA%  %SystemDrive%\ProgramData
     %PROGRAMFILES%  %SystemDrive%\Program Files
     %PROGRAMFILES(X86)%  %SystemDrive%\Program Files (x86)
     %PSModulePath%  %SystemRoot%\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\
     %PUBLIC%  %SystemDrive%\Users\Public
    {Drive}:\$Recycle.Bin C:\$Recycle.Bin
     %SystemDrive% C:
     %SystemRoot%  %SystemDrive%\Windows
     %TEMP% and %TMP%  %SystemDrive%\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Temp
     %USERDOMAIN% {userdomain}
     %USERNAME% {username}
     %USERPROFILE%  %SystemDrive%\Users\{username}
     %WINDIR%  %SystemDrive%\Windows
  • Default email notification title was updated. Emails sent by default now will have a more detailed title. The subject of the email from now on will be shorter and will include the name of the computer as well: [computername] [jobname] [status]. As an example for a backup job called ‘My Documents’ the subject could be: WORKSTATION12 My Documents success. These emails can be configured to have any details you want by going to ‘Backup Properties->Email->Email messages‘.
  • Fix: Missing .png file warning. In some situations when backing up the program configurations there was a warning written in the log file: ‘Warning: Folder “C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\Softland\Backup4all Professional 4\Backup4all.png” not found in zip’. We’ve corrected that thus if you encountered this error when backing up the program configurations an upgrade will resolve it.
  • Fix: Missing empty file name when restoring. This error occurred when trying to restore the Backup4all configurations on 32bit operating systems. Usually the error was similar to this one: ‘Error: File “\” does not exist in zip “1_Backup4all Configuration.zip”‘. This was fixed as well

As mentioned at the beginning of the post this update affects only Backup4all Professional and Backup4all Portable, as they have email notifications. You can get the new version from the download page: Download Backup4all 4.9.