My Win 11 operating system packed up today. It went into a loop that only full recovery could intercept. While I was able to eventually recover the operating system and protect my data, I was unable do anything about my rather extensive Wordlist.txt because it was not in the protection zone. The protection zone, as I call it, is the Documents folder, but the wordlist is stored in AppData\Local\LiteratureAndLatte\Scrivener, earmarked to be overwritten by the recovery process, like all other applications.
Therefore, my request is for an option to store Wordlist.txt in an area of a user’s choice, similar to the .prefs file.
Check: This PC > OS (C:) > Windows.old > Users > {Your Username} > AppData > Local > LiteratureAndLatte > Scrivener. The OS may have archived it there when recovering itself.
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Yeah it would surprise me if AppData was not included in this level of backup, considering how essential it can be to software states. It is not unusual to store important data in here—not just settings, like dictionary files—but actual work too (it is the default location for Scrivener’s automatic backups, all your project templates, compile formats, and so forth).
I don’t think it would be right for Scrivener to start storing settings and support files like this out wherever, in the public user folder space. That is not recommended practice; AppData exists for this reason, to keep the common areas clean and focused on files you work with. The .prefs file you refer to is not something Scrivener uses. This is something you saved as a backup file of its settings, probably with the Manage button in Options. The actual settings it uses are, as you’d expect, in the Registry.
It is better to make sure your entire user folder is backed up on a regular basis (at least daily, I make one every morning with my coffee, and stream updates to off-site server storage during the day).
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Nothing Literature&Latte was saved. Even my fonts changed from Biome to Ariel.
The disaster has set me back a month of Sundays.
I’m just too plain peeved to think about building a new wordlist from a 320k script.
It will take a keg of beer to get me in a mood. And who knows what I may do after that?
You mentioned having a .prefs file, have you tried importing your settings from that? If all goes well there, and this file is indeed a full settings backup file, that will at least get that kind of stuff back into the registry.
Also, if the font you refer to isn’t installed on your computer then Scrivener will fall back to a default, such as Arial. I am also wondering if you enabled showing invisible files and folders before giving up on finding AppData in the Windows.old backup? Try searching the web for tips on recovering data, everything I found indicates the whole user folder is backed up, not just the Documents subfolder. That would be ridiculous.
Thank you.
The .prefs file loaded back the overall customized settings and colors of Scrivener. I downloaded the font and instaled it. The font populated back through my projects, even into styles it was part of.
I rebuilt my compile formats and that’s working again.
I have all hidden folders in Windows unhidden by default.
I’ve also ran a search from C: the hard drive root directory for the wordlist file. No joy, except the current version.
Mine was a stubborn Windows failure that terminated all the auto-fixes and offered Reset preserving data files or total reset as the only options.
Looking at my Office docs, all I lost was some customised settings, but nothing as glaring as a personalised dictionary. I learned the hard way that I have to backup AppData.
Back to the grinder of spellcheck.
Hi @Amped_Heat,
Not directly related to your OP, but in case you aren’t aware –
Scrivener’s built-in dictionary is in the standard Hunspell format. If you like, you can swap it out for one more suited to your purpose.
See this post and this one for discussions and instructions.
Best,
Jim
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Okay, looks like an angle. Thank you.