My manuscript is gone!

[andreams51]

I started using Storyist yesterday. I have it autosaving every 5 minutes and manually saved it as well. When I opened up Storyist today, it is like starting from scratch. Nothing was saved. Fortunately, I do have it backed up on a flash drive, but why did this happen and what do I need to do to keep it from happening again. When I searched my computer, the file name doesn't exist anywhere. Thanks in advance for your help.

[marguerite]

That's not normal Storyist behavior, although I'm sure it's terrifying to see it happen. Steve will be along soon to help, I'm sure.

 

If you have any more information about where you put Storyist, what version of the operating system you are using, and where you expected the files to save, post it here so that he can begin to figure out what may have happened.

 

By the way, backup files are stored in your user library under Application Support/Storyist/Backup. You won't find a file there for every 5 minutes, but normally there is something pretty recent to hand so long as you don't turn off the auto-backup feature.

 

Also, Storyist works very well with Dropbox, which stores old versions of your files and even deleted files for some period of time (30 days, I think). Dropbox has saved my bacon more than once, and it's free.

Best,

Marguerite

[andreams51]

Thank you for your response. I downloaded my manuscript from the flash drive and resaved it in documents. I hope this does the trick. I just chose "save" from the file menu, thinking it would save it in Storyist and that when I restarted the program, I would at least be able to search for it. Do I always need to go to the document itself to launch Storyist?

 

Thanks,

Andrea

[Steve]

Hi Andrea,

I started using Storyist yesterday. I have it autosaving every 5 minutes and manually saved it as well. When I opened up Storyist today, it is like starting from scratch. Nothing was saved.
Fortunately, I do have it backed up on a flash drive, but why did this happen and what do I need to do to keep it from happening again. When I searched my computer, the file name doesn't exist anywhere. Thanks in advance for your help.

Let me ask you a few questions:

 

Are you unable to find the entire project, or was your manuscript missing from the project?

 

If you were not able to find the entire project, try this:

1. Open a Finder window.
2. Type a space in the Search field to enable the additional search parameters. The window icon should change to a smart folder icon.
3. Change the search scope from the current folder to "This Mac."
4. Click the + button in the search scope bar.
5. Change the first popup from "Kind" to "File Extension" and enter "story" as the extension.

You should see a list of all the Storyist projects on your Mac.

 

 

If your manuscript is missing, check the project trash. To do this, click the disclosure button next to the add button in the Project view. It could be that it was inadvertently deleted in an editing session. To restore it, just drag the file file back into the Project list.

 

If neither of these were the problem, let me know and we'll investigate further.

 

-Steve

[Steve]

Hi Andrea,

 

Thank you for your response. I downloaded my manuscript from the flash drive and resaved it in documents. I hope this does the trick. I just chose "save" from the file menu, thinking it would save it in Storyist and that when I restarted the program, I would at least be able to search for it. Do I always need to go to the document itself to launch Storyist?

 

Thanks,

Andrea

 

When you imported your manuscript into a Storyist project and chose File > Save, you created a new Storyist project (file) on disk. When you relaunch Storyist, you can open your recent Storyist projects using the File > Open Recent command.

 

-Steve