If I don't update the beta before it expires....

[SophieKisker]

@narrsd

@thomas.neuburger

What gets saved when you save Settings vs. what gets saved when you save a Theme?

Well, after you save them, you can open the resulting files directly with a text editor, and see the clear names of each of the hundreds of items in each.

I tried opening a saved theme in notepad and got nothing intelligible. Any other suggestions? I would like to know what is in each one, too. I’m afraid to try anything new lest I lose the settings it took forever to set. Thanks!

[JimRac]

@SophieKisker

@narrsd

@thomas.neuburger

What gets saved when you save Settings vs. what gets saved when you save a Theme?

Well, after you save them, you can open the resulting files directly with a text editor, and see the clear names of each of the hundreds of items in each.

I tried opening a saved theme in notepad and got nothing intelligible. Any other suggestions? I would like to know what is in each one, too. I’m afraid to try anything new lest I lose the settings it took forever to set. Thanks!

Hi SophieKisker,

There are two options files that can be saved, the one with all the Options, and the one with only Theme Options.

We already know the contents of the first – it contains all the Options you see when you launch File > Options. See the developer’s reply in this thread: [url]What's the difference between those two? - #3 by tiho_d]

This ‘all Options’ file is the only one I care about. I save a version of it any time I change an option that’s important to me. I have these saved Options files named by theme, so I have different options saved for different themes. I utilize the saved Options file with releases of the latest beta. With every new beta rev, I do a complete uninstall and reinstall of Scrivener. I then apply my favorite theme and do ‘Load Options from file’ selecting the appropriate options file, and my options are all set to where they were prior to the uninstall. You might consider taking that approach, so you have your options backed up in the event you have to do an unplanned install from scratch.

I don’t bother with the Theme Options file. As far as I know, L&L has provided no list of what Theme Options are saved to that file. As they haven’t provided one for the Mac side, it’s reasonable to assume they won’t provide one for the Windows side.

My point is, don’t wait for that list of Theme Options to back up your options, because it may never arrive.

Best,
Jim

[JimRac]

@JimRac

I don’t bother with the Theme Options file. As far as I know, L&L has provided no list of what Theme Options are saved to that file.

I took the advice provided upthread and compared the contents of the Options and Theme Options files. They are nearly identical. There are options saved in the Theme Options file which I would not consider theme-related. E.g., General\checkForUpdates, General\AuthorFirstName, AutoCorrection\enableAutoComplete, etc.

My guess is the Theme Options file is still very much early days and a work-in-progress, and will be greatly changed (reduced) prior to the final release. Or my understanding of the file’s purpose is way off.

So for the time being, I will stick to saving the Options file only and not bother with saving Theme Options, as currently there seems no point in it.

Best,
Jim

[RuffPub]

@johnnyalpha

Though I am no longer on a PC, if you are in an emergency situation like this one thing you could do is manually back date your system clock to an earlier date

I would strongly advise not doing this. This was a simple Windows hack some years ago, but more modern OSs like Win10 really hate this. You could screw up your security and OS updates etc and end up with much harder problems to fix than an out-of-date beta, solved with a quick re-install.

There’s nothing super special about Win 10 to make this a particular problem.

My process in a bind is fully quit any cloud services such as Dropbox change the date. Immediately open the date expired beta and update. Do not open any files on any programs while doing this.

Immediately the update completes, again, without opening any files, close open programs and correct the time. Reboot in case there are any cached items that may have the old date,

While its not generally a recommended process I’ve used it since the early Win days for various reasons. Of course the better process is to ensure you don’t miss the date in the first place.