Windows Backup Scheduling — Four Schedule Types and Holiday Calendars

From a simple dropdown to a precise CRON expression — both configure the same time-based schedule.

Regular Schedule — Basic and Advanced Modes

The Regular schedule type runs a task on a recurring time-based pattern and offers two configuration modes. Basic mode presents dropdown menus: choose a period (every N minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years), optionally restrict the rule to specific weekdays, and optionally set a start time. No knowledge of CRON syntax is required, and multiple Basic rules can be added to a single task to express complex patterns — for example, every 30 minutes during weekdays and once daily on weekends.

Advanced mode exposes the same schedule as a six-field CRON expression, giving full timing control to within one minute. For users already managing schedules on other systems, existing CRON expressions can often be transferred directly. Force Start is always available to run a task immediately regardless of its schedule — it does not reset the next scheduled execution. See the CRON Expression Reference section below for field definitions and examples.

No polling interval — the task fires the moment a file system event occurs.

Real-time Schedule

A task with a Real-time schedule activates on file system events rather than a clock trigger. When a file is created, modified, or deleted in the monitored source folder, the task fires immediately — with no waiting for a polling interval to elapse. This makes Real-time the right choice for workflows where latency matters: forwarding a document the instant it lands in a drop folder, syncing a configuration file the moment it changes, or triggering a processing pipeline as soon as new data arrives.

Real-time scheduling is available for folder sources. The monitoring behaviour — which events trigger a run, which files qualify — is configured in the Source settings of the task. For full details on the monitoring and filtering options, see the Core Operations page.

For real-time monitoring to operate around the clock without a logged-in user, Task Processor can run as a Windows Service.

Full user control — the task runs only when explicitly started, never automatically.

Manual Schedule

A task with a Manual schedule has no automated trigger. It runs only when the user explicitly starts it — by pressing Activate Task to begin normal operation, or by using Force Start to run the task immediately. Manual tasks are useful for operations that are inherently user-driven: ad-hoc backups, testing a configuration before promoting it to an automated schedule, or transfers that happen in response to a human decision rather than a fixed time pattern.

Force Start is not exclusive to Manual tasks — it is available on any task type regardless of schedule. It runs the full task including all On Completion steps, as if the task had fired on its normal trigger, without disturbing the next scheduled execution.

Any step in any task can launch another task — from activation through to on completion, and once per file during backup.

Trigger Other Tasks

Any task can include an Execute Task action that starts another AnyFileBackup task. This action can be placed in any of the task's steps: at activation, when the scheduled time arrives, or in On Completion. In the Backup step specifically, Execute Task fires once per individual file transferred — making it possible to launch a separate task at the destination to process each file immediately after it lands there, while the source task continues with the remaining files.

On Completion steps that execute another task can be conditioned on outcome — always, only on success, only on error, or only when no files were processed — making it straightforward to build branching workflows without scripting. The target of an Execute Task action should have its schedule type set to Linked. A Linked task has no automated trigger of its own and starts only when called by another task; it can also be Force Started manually at any time. The Linked task must already be active — the master task can only trigger tasks that are currently active. If the Linked task has not been activated, or its activation is set to Disabled, the master task cannot start it.

Run on public holidays, skip them, or ignore the calendar — per task, independently for each.

Holiday-Aware Scheduling

AnyFileBackup includes built-in public holiday calendars for up to 250 countries and territories. Each task can be assigned a calendar independently, with one of three behaviours: run only on public holidays, skip public holidays entirely, or ignore the calendar and run as scheduled regardless. The calendar is selected from the task's Schedule settings and is independent of the Windows system locale — different tasks on the same machine can follow different national calendars simultaneously.

In addition to the built-in country calendars, custom holiday lists can be created. A custom list is a user-defined set of dates treated as public holidays — built from scratch or duplicated from an existing country calendar and then edited manually. Custom lists are managed globally: created once, available for selection across all tasks, and they coexist alongside the pre-defined country calendars without replacing them.

Field-by-field reference for the six-field CRON expression used in Advanced mode.

CRON Expression Reference

Symbols

• *  — all values  (e.g. * in Hours = every hour)
• /N  — step  (e.g. */2 in Hours = every 2 hours; 6-22/2 = every 2 hours from 06:00 to 22:00)
• a-b — range  (e.g. 9-17 in Hours = 09:00 to 17:00)
• a,b — multiple values or ranges  (e.g. 1,15 in Days = 1st and 15th)

Worked examples