I have a question about backing up. (I have read all the available information about backing up, but it is unclear about all the notes, metadata, etc.) I began using the last beta about a week ago for all of the outlining, character sketches, notes, images and so on in preparation for starting in November.
The site said that even if you were using the prior beta version, you could extend that to December 7th with the NaNo version. (I plan on purchasing, hopefully with the discount, haha!) I had assumed that I would be able to use the same software and extend the beta period with a trial code or something. I am now quite concerned about having to uninstall and do a fresh reinstall.
If you do a backup, does it also backup every note, title, status flag, etc.? Or just the actual documents that you are working on? If I do a backup, can I just reimport this via the import function and have all of that work back? Although I haven’t started actually writing yet, I’ve been planning the hell out of it all week.
There is also a thread on the NaNo forums - I can post a response/reassurance for anyone else in the same boat. Thank you in advance for your time and help.
Looking at the NaNo forum, I think you have this sorted, but basically, uninstalling Scrivener won’t affect any of your files. If you uninstall and then install the NaNo version, you should still have access to all of the projects you were working on beforehand. Scrivener projects are saved as .scriv files, and you choose where to save them when you first create your project (most likely in your Documents folder or equivalent). When you run Scrivener’s uninstaller, it doesn’t touch those files that you have created - it only wipes out the program itself. This is just like MS Word and suchlike, where you create .doc files that exist on your hard drive entirely separately to the program itself.
That said, backing up is always a great idea, of course - you can never be too careful with your writing projects. When you go to File > Backup Project To, a backup of your entire project will be created - essentially a copy of your entire project. If “Backup as ZIP file” is ticked, then it will create a .zip file - unzipping that file will unpack a copy of your project. Making a backup is also useful if you are about to embark on major changes to a project, because it means you will have a copy of the project as it was before you changed things should you change your mind.
A related question: I understand that the NaNo version has a template for NaNo. I have already set up my outline, character sketches, etc. in the normal Novel template in the normal Windows beta trial version.
Yeah, I know. That’s not a question. This is the question: If I delete the regular trial and install the NaNo trial, is there an easy way to move all my stuff from one template to the other?
A template is just a project that already has some items set up for you in the binder, maybe some labels and stuff already filled in and so forth. Because of that, there’s no way to transfer a project into a template or assign a template onto a project after it’s started–it wouldn’t really mean anything to do so. Since you already have a project set up with an outline and everything you want, there’s really no reason to change it–the NaNo template is just a suggested way for some people to get started, and it’s essentially just the Novel template with a little bit added–the Project Targets are set to 50K words for the manuscript, for instance, and there’s a template document with a document target set for 1,667 words, for those who like to keep a daily word count by keeping each day’s writing separate.
All of these things you can easily set up yourself in your existing project if you want them. So my suggestion would be to create a new project from the NaNoWriMo template if you want to take a look at how it’s set up, and then just create any of that in your own project if you like it. You can even drag and drop documents from the NaNo project into your own project if you want, though if you’ve started yours from the Novel project you’ve probably already got the character sketches and such–and anyway it sounds like you have your own set up, so you might not want these in any case. The NaNoWriMo template just uses the Novel Standard Manuscript Format for compiling by default, and the NaNoWriMo compile setting for uploading to the servers (basically just a few tweaks made to the “Original” preset) is available as part of the NaNo trial version’s settings, so you can access it from Compile in any project, not just the NaNo template.
The template project and the compile settings are also available for separate download from the special offer page, so you can also just use these in your current version without switching to the NaNo trial if you prefer.
