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How to Migrate Data from Tally 7.2 to Tally 8.1

The Process of Migrating data from Tally 7.2 to 8.2 is very simple. However it takes can take a lot of time if the existing company is having big data. Before converting data you should take backup of your existing data.

To start with first of all download tally from tally's site.
Run Install.exe in a separate folder tally8.1. Now activate the license of Tally 8.1. To Migrate data from 7.2 to 8.1 it is necessary to have an activated version of 8.1.
Go to Tally 8.1 folder and locate a file migration tool.
Start the tool by specifying the location of Tallt7.2 data which would be in c:\tally\data folder where your 7.2 version was installed.
Select a company and migrate. After whole process has ended it would make another fold in same location but with different name.
You can identify the folder easily as it would contain 4 numbers. e.g. Your existing folder would be 001 and new folder would be 0001.
Copy paste this newly created folder in c:\tally8.1\data and run tally.

You would see the new converted data.

Tally Licensing: How to Activate,Update and Surrender?

Tally Licensing is one of the best thing for Tally and the most unique licensing system for stopping software piracy. In fact Tally is one of those software companies who had succeeded in stopping the piracy of software by implementing innovative licensing system.
Although it has proved a boon to company but is has been a bane for the users. This licensing system has raised difficulties for its users. According to Mr Bharat Goenka , Managing Director Tally India, life of pirated user is more easier the original user. All the hardship of licensing are faced by original user.
Many of Tally users have asked me about licensing related problem from time to time.These are related to activation of license, surrender of license and the updation of license. Lets understand the licensing process to solve the problems faced.

The Process of Licensing
After Installing Tally, you have to activate the license. Activation of license actually puts the signature of your computer into Tally's server. The signature, which contains information related to version of operating system, the hardware installed, the machine name etc is stored in Tally's server against your serial no. That serial no. is blocked against any other installation preventing duplication of your license. Internet is needed to send the signature file to Tally's server. In response to the entry a file is sent to the computer which is stored in the same folder where Tally is installed. This file is stored as tally9.lic in same folder where tally is installed.
There are two ways to activate the license. Online and Offline. Computer with direct internet connection can activate the license by online process. Those computers which has no direct internet have to follow offline process.

Activation of License

The License is to be activated to avail full features of Tally. If the license is not activated Educational would be shown on the top right corner. And Multi Account printing menu would be disabled.
Just after starting the tally the activation form is displayed.

After connecting the internet this form has to be filled and submitted. The serial no. and the key is printed on every box which comes with Tally. You have to fill the email address which you often use because tally sends latest updates regarding product on this email address.

The offline Process.
If you don't have the direct access to internet then you have to follow the offline process of license activation. The concept is same, a file has to be generated and sent to the tally server and another file from

server has to be installed in Tally machine. If the computer has no internet connection then we have to find a pc where the internet connection is available. So the file from our computer has to be generated and then copied to another system and from there it has to be uploaded and the resultant file has to be again copied in tally folder.
For this out have to escape the activation form in the starting and perform following steps.
Go to F12 -> Licensing -> Offline -> Activation.
Again the same form will be displayed and after pressing enter with all information filled a file called tallyreq.lic would be generated. This file has to be copied on any cd or pen drive and pasted in the computer where internet connection is available. (if Tally is not installed on that computer then it is to be installed there also.)
Here when you follow these steps:-
Go to F12 -> Licensing -> Offline ->SEnd External Request.
You would get tallyresp.lic file in response to file you have uploaded. Now the last and final step of offline activation is to copy the file from Tally folder and paste in the folder where Tally is to be activated. After pasting the file just run Tally and you would be greeted by a message of successful activation and a prompt for you to register your software.

Your Tally is activated.

Updation of Tally License
The Tally License has to be updated frequently. This is usually done to prevent license being expired. After 30 to 45 days you would start watching a message in your lower right corner that your license is going expire, please update/renew your license. This message is usually 5 days
prior to the expiry of license. During this period what you have to do is just connect to Internet and start Tally. The License is automatically updated. Otherwise you can choose
F12-> Licensing->Online-> Update

Surrender of License
Tally has made provisions to surrender the software license in case The machine you are currently using is going to be formatted. If the change is inevitable then one should surrender the license so that the information written in Tally server can be erased. Only after successful surrender of your license it can be installed on another machine.
F12 -> Licensing -> Online -> Surrender
Here it is noteworthy that while surrendering the license we should update the license first just to check that if internet is working properly or not. Otherwise it may happen that due to unavailability of connection or poor connectivity the license get surrendered on machine but information on internet server is not correctly updated. So only after successful message of updation you should surrender the license.

So from the above discussion it is clear that:-
1. We activate license to make it origional.
2. We update license when it is going to expire and
3. We surrender the license just to reactivate it somewhere else.

Is Your Tally Original? How to Check it !

Source
First thing first, check up your source of purchase. Here is the list of DCP's and Resellers of tally from where you can buy original Tally.

Deliverables
When you purchase tally you would get one box which would contain a small booklet having serial number and key printed on front with one cd which would have rel one of that software. You can get latest version of the software from Tally's site of tally or at ApniTally.
If you are upgrading from 6.3 to 9 then your serial nos. would change but one thing would never change is the sum of all digits of serial no. The sum would be the multiple of 9

Registration
Just after buying don't forget to register the software. By this way you would be know to Tally. Tally would provide you the required help when you are in need only if your serial no. is registered with them.

So here is my checklist :-

Check the serial no. the sum of all digits should be multiple of 9
Check your registration details on Tally Site.
Install the latest release and then check the functioning.
If all things mentioned above are correct then contact tally or the vendor.

Why Tally Turns Educational ?

To find the answer to this question we have to first understand the process of licensing. In hardlock version Tally use to find its licensing file in the hardlock itself which was there at printer port. In softlock version these files are downloaded and stored in your computer somewhere. Now when we get our Tally activated following process happens

Tally checks internet connectivity
Tally generates a files which consists of information regarding your computer hardware and configuration.
Tally uploads this file to tally server on internet and stores this file against your serial no.
In response it gives one more file which is stored in your computer somewhere. This file is your license file.
Every time you run tally it checks for license file info with your computer hardware and configuration.
If it matches then your tally starts in licensing mode.

Most of the times what goes wrong is change in your computer configuration after the license file has been downloaded. Earlier for security purpose tally made it mandatory to update file after every 30 days in tally 6.3 version and early 7.2 releases. But now keeping view the practical problems associated with it you can download the license file and use it for as long as you want.
Most common change which can cause problem can be

Disabling or change of your LAN/Ethernet card.
Change in configuration after installing new software or drivers.
Change in windows configuration like computer name user name etc.

The Solutions
To prevent Tally from being educational you can do following:-

You can make a system restore point while installing Tally. But before restoring the same point you should remember that you data can be lost in this process so take an external backup of your data on CD etc.
You can go in back dates by changing system date and see if Tally is working or not (Some times it works !!).
You can insure that your system name, lan cards etc. Doesn't change.
If you know that a trouble is coming ahead e.g. you may need to upgrade system or format the system then best solutions is that you first surrender the tally before formatting.
If you are in deep trouble an and cannot connect internet the surrender the tally in offline mode and keep that file in a pen drive or CD along with your data backup.
If you are in much deeper trouble and finds out in the morning that you computer doesn't start windows and last option is to format it again, then try to start windows in DOS mode and recover that data files by copying whole Tally folder in to another drive. Then you can write mail to support@tallysolutions.com stating your Sr..No and contact person name to reset your licensing info. Wait for the response and then activate the Tally.

With this steps and concepts in mind I think you would get minimum trouble.
If you have any comments or suggestions please let me know so that they can help other users also.

Configuring a Multiuser Tally
Tally Server

When ever we talk about server we imagine a machine which is big on computing and having high memory and storage space etc. But in case of Tally a Tally server need not to fulfill these requirements. In case of Tally server an ordinary computer can do the job, as on server not much computing is done. Tally server usually does the duty of holding the data and serving the license file only.It doesn't do any computing on it self as tally seldom gets loaded on server.
So we can give an ordinary desktop the responsibility of tally server. It should be well connected with other computers in organization and should have reasonable memory for working. Normal server in the company which may be doing some other duties like hosting, domain controlling etc can be avoided if needed as it would be busy with it's own work.

Network

Proper network should be there with cat5 or cat6 cables. Switches should be used instead of hubs as they are fast and intelligent . Preferably it should be on TCP/IP protocol and every machine should have an ip address on its LAN card with one common IP Pool. If tally server is having IP as 192.168.0.1 then nodes should have the IP as 192.168.0.2 and so on. The work group on all computers should be same and machines can have separate names. The name of the tally server can be TallyServer and the work group name can be organization name e.g. cts or tallyacademy etc.

Configuration:Server
Configuration at server end as well

as nodes is very important. First of all while installing tally on server the check mark for server should be ticked. Then Tally license on server should be active i.e. Tally on the server should show the serial no and Tally Gold Multi user should be there on right hand top corner of Tally.
It is advisable that you make the folder name according to its version instead of making a default folder like tally only. If version Tally9 is there then the folder should be Tally9.
Share the data folder and give it a name like tally9data. Sharing can be done right clicking the folder and choosing sharing and security. Be sure to allow users to modify the files.

Configuration: Nodes First of all install Tally in Tally9 folder in C drive. Modifications are needed in tally.ini file at nodes. Open the tally.ini the configuration and setting file in notepad and find the line TallyLicenseServer. If there are semi colons bore this line then remove the semicolons. This line has following syntex :-

TallyLicenseServer= 192.168.0.1:9000

or
TallyLicenseServer=\\TallyServer:9000

Here 192.168.0.1 is the IP address of the Tally server machine and 9000 is the default port at which license is running. You can replace the IP address with computer name e.g. TallyServer. The path of data folder should be also defined, for this find the line ;; Specify location of Data files Data =. By default it would have syntex like Data = C:\Tally9\Data i.e. the folder where tally has been installed on nodes. It should be changed to new location on network i.e. \\Tally9Data the name of the folder which we have given while sharing on server. So the data line becomes as follows

Data = \\Tally9Data

Understanding Tally Configuration File Tally.ini

If you have used single user then it may be the case that you have never

bothered to edit this file or even tried to know where this file is and what it does. But If you have worked on a multi user Tally version then chances are that at one time or another some one has told you to go to Tally.ini file and do the required setting.
Tally's behavior is controlled by its .ini file. This file resides in the folder in which Tally's exe file is or you can say in the folder where tally is installed. Let understand why this file is necessary and how it can be helpful for us.

Purpose
This file is Tally's initialization file. It can be also referred as configuration and setting file of Tally. When ever Tally loads itself then it takes working environment from this file. All variables from this file are picked and then tally starts functioning accordingly. So this file is importantfor desired working of Tally software.