Creating Manual Backups

Moneydance backups are essentially 'saves' of your entire data set, at the time the backup file was created or modified.

Moneydance backup files use the .moneydancearchive file extension.

Moneydance offers the ability to manually export a backup at any time, to a location of your choosing (external hard drive, thumb drive, etc.)

Manually Export a Backup -

To export a backup, select File > Export Backup.

This will display a window similar to the screenshot below.

The screenshots below display the process on a Mac, but the steps are the same on a Windows or Linux system.

Enter the appropriate name for your file
Make sure you retain the .moneydancearchive file extension at the end of the file name.

Then choose the location for your backup file.

Select 'Save' and wait while Moneydance exports your data.

When the export is complete Moneydance will notify you that your data was exported successfully.

In addition to creating manual backups, you can enable automatic backups.
The steps to do this are outlined in this article

You'll find information about restoring from a backup file in this article.