No autobackups and instructions?

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Ally Hastings

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May 2, 2025, 11:18:40 PM5/2/25
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Hi there,
I upgraded from yWriter5 to yWriter7, and everything seems fine except that my auto backups are not happening at all. I have them set for every 5 minutes. The automatic daily backup of entire project also didn't seem to have happened.

I have nothing at all when I view backups (it's not a huge drama, only 2 chapters in, but still).

When I noticed that the autobackups weren't happening, I have been manually saving, but that also didn't seem to take (or I forgot to save for a long time maybe!)

The Alternative backup folder - was that something I needed to set up to get autobackups? And how do I create that? (I know nothing, so if anyone has patience to tell me in baby steps I'd much appreciate it!)

Also, I've been looking all over for a help manual but I can't seem to find anything. There are a lot of things that I don't remember being in yWriter5, and I'm not sure what they mean or how to use them. In case it isn't obvious, I don't know anything about coding and am not the most tech savvy, but I used yWriter5 for years with no issues.

Any ideas of what I need to do, or if maybe I'm doing something wrong?


Andrew Applegarth

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May 3, 2025, 12:35:32 AM5/3/25
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Go to [Tools] -> [Backups] and make sure that "Automatic daily backup of entire project" is checked.

I would also recommend visiting "Set scene editor Autobackup options" as well.

- Andrew

Simon Haynes

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May 3, 2025, 1:06:56 AM5/3/25
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If that doesn't work, feel free to send me the log.txt file offlist.


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KM Lafferty

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May 4, 2025, 10:04:48 AM5/4/25
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 Are you attempting to view the autobackups from within your MS Windows File Explorer in the folder where you expect your project to be, or are you trying to view them within yWriter itself and not finding them? 

If you are doing the latter, only Simon can help. But if you are doing the former, can I suggest you go into yWriter to see if the autobackups for your project are displaying in yWriter - you can do this under Tools>Backups>View Autobackups.  You will see a list of dates that represent all dates the project was opened which, if you click on, some will have scene backups sorted by time saved, but some might have nothing if you only opened the project but did not change anything, so try all the dates to see if there's backed-up scenes in them. If you can see backed-up scenes, your project is saved in a location different to where you think it is but you have not lost anything, you just need to identify where it is saved now.

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Simon Haynes

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May 4, 2025, 10:14:32 AM5/4/25
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I've also seen people opening a ywriter project from a ZIP backup directly, and then continuing to use that one instead of their main. The problem with this is that Windows creates a folder inside the Windows Temp folder with a copy of the project, which the user then continues to work on, and when their temp folder is cleaned up by windows it will delete this newer copy of the project and all autobackups.

To try and prevent people doing this, I've implemented a check on yWriter startup to see if a project is being opened from a zip folder, and then it will refuse to load it.

The only safe method is to extract a backup ZIP into a new empty folder, then run the project from there.



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