i want the new zen cart installation to point to my old database.

there were many mods that were half installed custom templates, mods left not working, security patches weren't installed... and the guy that was doing it just left mid job. I'm not capable of fixing the mess, so i'm trying to start over, but don't want to loose my data/customer order history, etc.

So i thought maybe i could just point the new zen install to the old database. Maybe i should just import a backup of the old database into the database created with the new installation?