Understanding the installation update process

[adaptit.bruce]

A user did an update to the most reason, but then misunderstood what
was required (nothing actually) and had some non-success in trying
unnecessary things. I wrote to her the following, let's call her
"Jenny".

Dear Jenny,

You weren't explicit about what you have been trying to do, but it
sounds like your attempts were based on a misunderstanding. I'll try
explain.

(1) Any oneAdapt It installation involves two different folder
locations on your computer. The first folder location is the location
that the installer puts all its files in, including the Adapt It
executable itself, when it unzips them as part of the installation
process and stores them. That folder resides in the "C:\Program
Files" folder by default; and if you are using the Unicode version,
the folder name will be Adapt It WX Unicode. In there will be a whole
lot of things, including documentation files, the consistent changes
standalone application, documentation for the latter, and so forth.
You normally have no need to ever go into that folder.

(2) When Adapt It runs for the first time, it creates a data folder
where it will store project folders, and in the project folders, a
Knowledge Base file unique to each project, and an Adaptation folder
in which the project's documents are stored. This top level data
folder is called, for the Unicode version, Adapt It Unicode Work, and
the default location for it is in your Documents folder - or, if using
XP, in your My Documents folder. Each subsequent launch of Adapt It
will go back to that work folder to access your data.

Now, when you update your installation, say to 5.0.1 as you just did,
what happens? First, absolutely nothing in your data folder mentioned
in (2) is touched in any way, and since that's where your project
knowledge base resides, your knowledge base is completely unaffected
by installing a newer version, and that is true also for your existing
adaptation documents. So you've no work to do at all to make your old
knowledge base "available" or "be imported" into your new installation
- it's already ready for immediate use and is in the right place. You
just start using your newer Adapt It version and you are automatically
using the old knowledge base and your old adaptation documents.

So what does the new installer actually do? It changes only things in
the folder mentioned in (1) above. It will, for example, overwrite the
older executable with the new one (if you want to keep the old
executable, you could use Win Explorer to rename the executable before
doing the installation update, but there's no good reason to do that).
It will look through the files in its installation and compare the
dates with the files in your installation folder on your hard drive,
and anything newer but having the same name will be used to overwrite
the older one. Once the new installation is finished, and it takes
only about 10 seconds, you are fully updated and ready to continue
your work. You then just go on working as normal, everything in your
"data" location has not be changed in any way, and it is all fully
ready for you to continue working.

Okay, I don't know what you did below, but you didn't need to. If
you've damaged something, recovery should be easy. Have a look inside
your project's knowledge base using the Tools menu command Edit
Knowledge Base... Check that the value for the number of entries in
the left list is as large as you think it should be, for each of the
10 tabs. If you think your KB has been damaged by what you did, then
do the following.

1. Be in your project, and close any open document.
2. Do File / Restore Knowledge Base...
3. Follow the prompts, Yes to the first, No or Yes to the second, and
when you see the list of documents in a dialog, just click OK button.
When the restore process has finished your KB will be fully populated
with all your data so far.
4. If you partly populated your KB early on by doing File / Import to
Knowledge Base and supplying a file of \lx and \ge entries, then use
that command again and re-import the contents of that same file. Then
you'd have everything back.

Don't forget you can do Export Knowledge Base at any time, and store
the exported file in some safe place for backup purposes. Eg, on a CD
or thumb drive. But really, it's the documents which are the solid
gold things, because you can rebuild your KB from them anytime by the
above process. You should keep a periodic backup of them somewhere
safe.

(The KB restore process works best if all your adaptation documents
are present in the Adaptations folder; so that the KB restore process
will then be able to find every single adaptation you've ever done in
order to put a copy into the KB being restored. So if you ever move
adaptation documents out of the Adaptation folder for some reason,
you'd want to put them back, at least temporarily, before doing the
Restore Knowledge Base command.)

[Bob Buss]

There is an error in the first sentence of this post. Bruce meant to
say "recent version" rather than "reason."