Moving TallyPrime to a new computer: your licence and your data

Tally sums up switching a licence to a different computer in four steps: surrender the licence, reactivate it, configure the data path, and get started. Your company data travels separately, as a backup taken on the old computer and restored on the new one. Do both and the new computer picks up where the old one left off.

Before you start, have the administrator’s Tally.NET ID and password to hand, with access to the email inbox it’s registered to. For any licensing task, Tally also asks that TallyPrime runs as administrator (right-click the TallyPrime icon and choose Run as Administrator) with full access to its installation folder.

On the old computer, on TallyPrime Release 7.0 or later, go to Alt+Y (Data) > Backup & Restore > Backup. Press Backspace to change the backup path to a USB drive or another location you can reach from the new computer, select the companies (or All Items), and finish the list. On Release 6.2 and earlier, the path is Alt+Y (Data) > Backup.

A local backup has no password of its own, but anyone restoring it still needs the company’s TallyVault or security password if it has one. Make sure whoever does the restore knows it.

Surrendering frees the licence for use on another computer. Tally lists moving the licence to another system, upgrading Windows, formatting the machine and changing the hard disk as times to surrender, and you can reactivate the licence anytime afterwards.

In TallyPrime, go to F1 (Help) > Settings > License > Manage License and press Ctrl+F7 (Surrender). Enter the administrator’s Tally.NET ID and password, and press Enter.

Install TallyPrime on the new computer. On the Welcome to TallyPrime screen, choose Reactivate License, enter the administrator’s Tally.NET ID and password, and press Enter to reactivate. If you’ve forgotten the password, Alt+R resets it. Tally’s guidance for a new system is to reactivate your existing licence like this, not to activate it afresh.

Install a release your TSS covers. TSS is what entitles you to newer releases, and if TallyPrime is upgraded to a release your TSS doesn’t cover, the licence goes into Educational Mode until you install a release within your TSS validity and reactivate. The licensed computer also needs to connect to the internet at least once every 30 days, or it goes into Educational Mode.

On Release 7.0 or later, go to Alt+Y (Data) > Backup & Restore > Restore, choose the drive or folder that holds the backup, select the company and the backup version, and press Ctrl+A. On Release 6.2 and earlier, it’s Alt+Y (Data) > Restore.

If a company with the same name is already in the destination, TallyPrime asks whether to skip or replace it, and replacing overwrites the existing folder. To check where TallyPrime reads company data from, open F1 (Help) > About and look for the location of company data under Data Information. On Release 7.0 and later, the data and backup paths are set in Alt+Y (Data) > Configuration.

You can still move the licence. Tally says that if a licence wasn’t surrendered, reactivating it surrenders it from the other computer automatically. The company data, though, can only come from your most recent backup, which is why regular backups kept away from the computer matter.

Silver is a single-user licence that works on one machine at a time: once it’s reactivated on another computer, it stops working on the previous one. For Gold, Tally’s advice is to surrender the licence on the old server machine, reactivate it on the new one, and then point every computer on the office network to the new server.

Powercomputers handles TallyPrime licensing, installation, TSS renewal and support, and reaches every region of Tanzania by phone, WhatsApp and remote session. If you’d rather not move the licence and data yourself, get in touch and the team will take you through it.