Aaaaaarrrrggghhh!!!!!!

[vivaldirules]

I spent 8+ hours and was half the way through fixing numerous errors and format issues with Einstein's "Relativity - The Special and General Theory" using Book Designer and then the power blinked off. I assumed there'd be no problem since I made frequent saves. But when I retrieved the last saved file, it was from yesterday and not today. I look in \Program Files\Book Designer 4.0\LastFile and indeed it's dated yesterday. I opened it and indeed it's yesterday's version. I've searched and see no other relevant files anywhere on my computer. I don't know think I'm up to starting all over on this one and would really like to get it back. Any ideas would be gratefully accepted.

[Bob Russell]

I can't give you Book Designer help, but I sure hope someone does... I'd really like to see that one uploaded myself!

[JSWolf]

What I do is save the HTML0 file every so often just in case. Have a look for it and see if you've saved it. if you've just done a save then you did not really save to a proper file and could very well lose what you've done.

[HarryT]

Yes, unfortunately if things go wrong BD has a habit of reverting to earlier versions, or even losing the book entirely. What I do myself is to make a copy of the entire "Lastfile" folder every so often. I'm sorry to say that I'm afraid you've lost what you've done .

[vivaldirules]

Thanks, guys. I wonder what "Save" does if doesn't save the original html0 file. Maybe this should be a warning to include in your next verision of the BD tutorial, Harry. Oh, well. I'll think about starting again some day soon.

[vivaldirules]

Okay, maybe this was for the best afterall. I have found another copy in better condition and I haven't found any errors in it yet. Maybe I can have this uploaded today.

[andyafro]

it does go back to a previous version sometimes it's very annoying best thing to do is every time you save it make a back up copy of the bd save file somewhere

[JSWolf]

save saves what you are working on so when you do write out the HTML0 file o any other format, it picks up the current changes.

[vivaldirules]

Double Aaaaaarrrrggghhh!!!!!!

I'm having a miserable time with BD. After my loss yesterday, I've been creating several copies of the book I'm working on - you can't have too many copies, I assume. I've named these Relativity.html, Relativity2.html, etc. Every time I close BD and then restart it (or empty a book and then open it again), things change: the photo I've added is resized or is missing, some of the figures I've added are jumbled or replaced with others, some of the "titles" are now "subtitles", etc. All sorts of strange things seem to be happening. Let me take a moment to also say that I wouldn't mind having to work at it so much if this were a really intuitive program that quickly and efficiently produces the desired product. But I have to say that I find this thing to be a pretty awful tool to use. That said, would you have any ideas why these changes are happening? Should I be saving these multiple copies in separate folders? Should I be naming something else? Should I nuke BD, reboot, and then reinstall it? Again, I would be grateful for any advice. At the moment, I fear that I have once again lost a great deal of the book file that I created.

[Patricia]

Well, I save mine as a Book Designer file. I click on 'make ebooks' then on 'Book Designer' and make the file. I repeat the process every hour or so, so that I never lose more than an hour's work. (This was learned the hard way.) I use the same title etc, so that the new BD file replaces the older versions. They are automatically saved in 'my computer/c drive/program files/Book Designer/BD.'

I don't understand how you are saving things as html files. Do you mean html0? bd works in html0 format. If you are trying to make html then you are probably causing it to go haywire.

[JSWolf]

I also save every so often as a Book Designer source file (HTML0).

[Roy White]

Vivaldi... I've noticed that, If I get text from the internet by Copying and pasting straight from the internet page to Book Designer, then my projects do EXACTLY what you are describing with the unespected changes and frequently it wont format and create the file after I'm done anyway! It is extremely aggravating!!!

However, If I copy and paste into Notepad, then copy from notepad into Book Designer I dont have any problems. I think that if you copy and paste web pages directly, you alos pick up random HTML language bits that throw Book designer into hussy fits. Notepad strips all the HTML from a chunk of text and then Book Designer only deals with text. It appears to me that Book Designer converts Text into its own version using HTML and then displays it so if you have spare bits of HTML it clogs it up worse than Spock used to deestroy artificial intelligence characters in old Star Trek episodes by telling them knock knock jokes!@.

At any rate since I started running text I got from the internet through notepad I haven't had any trouble. Other than that I do close the program down every 30 minutes or so, then navigate to Program files. Book DEsigner, etc, and copy and save my 'last file' to my desktop just in case.

Its a good program but not a great one but what do you expect for free?

[vivaldirules]

Originally Posted by Roy White

...worse than Spock used to deestroy artificial intelligence characters in old Star Trek episodes by telling them knock knock jokes!@.

ROTFL! Well done.

Thanks for the info. I'll watch for these problems, too. In my case, I had loaded BD with a Word document that contained the images. I still have the Word file so will try it again when I find the time. In the meantime, I have defragmented my hard drive. It was pretty bad and I'm hoping that was the cause of my problems. I may also remove and then reinstall BD before I try again.