yWriter Comprehensive Help File

This document was recovered from the lost yWriter google sites page, and is still a work in progress

This help file was written by volunteers, and mostly refers to yWriter5. Much of the information is still current, except the RTF5 folder is no longer part of YW6 and YW7 projects. Every reference to 'yw5' files also applies to 'yw6' and 'yw7' files.

TROUBLE-SHOOTING How do I?

How to change the RTF file name for a scene, and why would I want to do this?

No longer relevant, as only the obsolete YW5 format uses RTF files.

Find a lost/deleted scene?

Go to your yWriter\autobackups folder and select the subfolder
with today's date eg E:\YWriterProject\Autobackups\2010-04-06, then check the sequentialSceneBackups.zip file and see if you can find it

How to number my pages?

There is no page numbering in yWriter. It's not relevant for ebooks, and to create a PDF or document you need to export your file anyway.

How to recover corrupted documents?

First, a couple of DO NOTS:
I. If you open a project and find that it's become corrupted, close yWriter and DO NOT try opening the project again until you go through the steps below!
II. If you have a corrupted project, DO NOT try to open one of the .yw5 backup files in the backup directories. It won't work, and it will complicate your recovery.
Steps:
1) Close yWriter. 2) Find and make a safe copy of your log.txt file so that you can send it to Simon if he needs it. On a Windows XP system, it will be in (drive letter):\Documents and Settings\ (your user name)\Application Data\Spacejock
Software\yWriter5. On Vista or Win 7, it will be in (drive
letter):\Users\(your user name)\AppData\Roaming\Spacejock Software\yWriter5. You may want to look at it in a text editor to see if you see an obvious reason for your project file becoming corrupted. (For example, if someone accidentally deleted or renamed your RTF5 folder in your project, it will
recreate the folder with nothing in it, and there would probably be a log entry for that.)
3) Before doing anything else, make a safe copy of your project folder and all of its contents. You don't want to make any changes to the copy, just keep it so you have something you can copy back in and start over with if your first recovery attempt is unsuccessful.
4) Open your project folder and see what's in it. There should be 5 folders and 2 files. The folders are Autobackups, Export, Images, Logs, and RTF5. The files should be (your project name).yw5 and (your project name).yw5.bak .If there's a .lock file, it means that yWriter either has the project open
or that it crashed while the project was open. In a recovery situation withy Writer shut down, it shouldn't be there. Make absolutely certain that yWriter isn't running (check for the yWriter5.exe task in Task Manager if necessary), and then delete the file. If you have a missing or incorrectly
named folder, you can correct the problem. Make sure you understand why the corruption happened before you open the project in yWriter, so that you don't just recreate the problem.
5) If there's nothing obviously wrong in the project structure, compare your.yw5 to your .yw5.bak file. The .bak is a copy of the .yw5 from before the last time you opened it. If you've only opened your project once (see DO NOT I), the .bak may be good, if your project became corrupt when you opened
it. Often when a project becomes corrupted, you'll see a .yw5 file that's 2 KB in size (like a new, empty project) and a .bak file that still contains all your project data from before the corruption. If that's the case, you can recover the project simply by renaming, moving, or deleting the corrupt
.yw5 file and replacing it with a copy of the good .bak file. Before you open it, you still need to determine why yWriter corrupted it (for example, the 5.1.2.2 beta that created an incompatibility in any .yw5 files it saved), but at least you have your project back.6) If the .bak file is corrupt, the next step is to find the most recent good .yw5 file in the Autobackups folder. The names of the folders under the Autobackups folder are dates. Start with the most recent. There should
be a file in it named (your project name).yw5_Latest.zip. If there isn't, it means you didn't open the project on that day. If not, look for a file named Full Backup of (your project name).zip. If there isn't one of those,
either, you'll need to work back through the dated directories until you come to either a yw5_Latest or a Full Backup. Once you find one, drill down through the directory structure in the zip until you reach the .yw5 file. Extract it and you should have a good project file again. WARNING: Any
changes you made other than scene contents after the time this backup was made will be lost. Contents of new scenes can be recovered by opening their RTF files and copying out the contents, but anything else is lost. This is why that .bak file is so important, because it normally is up to date as of
the last time you closed the project.
If you experienced a yWriter corruption/loss you can try running earlier and earlier Restores, until you find the last good (uncorrupted) project. Experience says that this will normally be only as far back as copy -1 or -2. Ok, so you've lost some creative genius, but probably only a small percentage of that Pulitzer Prize novel.

How to recover lost stuff. Help!

There's also the autobackups folder. When you load a project each day the yw5 file is zipped automatically into two different files - partial and complete autobackups. Just extract files, working backwards through the dates until you find one which is working.
Most times the problem is shutting down Windows while yWriter is still loaded & running, and while yWriter will try to save the project when this happens, Windows won't hang around and wait for the disk writes to finish. (Thus wrecking the yw5 file) Don't forget you can mix and match .yw5 and RTF files. E.g. all your work will be in the autobackups folder - the scene content rtf files are saved out every 5 minutes while you're working on them. The only things you can lose are notes, scene descriptions, etc, and if you're paranoid like me you can click tools - backups - backup entire project whenever you feel like it.

How to restore a project from autobackups

This is the recommended method of restoring a project from an Autobackup. It assumes the yw5/6/7 file is corrupted or damaged in some way, but all the rtf (scene) files in your project\RTF5 folder are intact and are the latest versions. (Note: there is no RTF5 folder for YW6 or YW7 project files, as all scene content is included in the body of the project.)
To restore a project you would do the following:
Using Explorer, open the folder containing your yWriter project
Open the Autobackups folder
Open the most recent folder, by date
Open the file 'Full Backup of ... (project name)' (it's a zip file)
Extract the contents to a new folder, called 'ywrestore'
(You must extract contents with the folder structure intact)
Now return to the folder containing your yWriter project
YW5 projects only: Open the RTF5 folder, which contains all the current scene content files
YW5 projects only: Copy (do NOT move) all the RTF files into the ywrestore\RTF5 folder
YW5 projects only: (Be sure to overwrite all destination files - these are older versions from the autobackup)
Now double-click the YW5/6/7 file in the ywrestore folder to open the copy of your project.
If all is okay, exit yWriter and rename your OLD project folder to (project folder).old
Then rename 'ywrestore' to (project folder)

How to restore the font bar in the scene editor window?

In the scene editor window on the content page you can show or hide the font bar that has B I U S (Bold, Italics, Underline, Strikethrough) and the highlight colour? In the Scene editor go to Settings>Hide font bar which is a toggle switch.

How to save my project under another name when there is no 'Save as...' option?

In yWriter, Tools/Backups/Backup Entire Project, then Tools/Backups/Restore
Autobackup and restore to a new folder.
Open the folder that contains your project folder with Windows Explorer and
make a copy of the project folder and all its contents.
Use archive or backup software to make copies of your project folder and its
contents.

How to save the work I have done into a new version and retain the original in case the new stuff doesn't work?

Make a copy of your project folder and all its contents. You then have a copy to work with and a copy to keep. Make sure you shut yWriter down before you make the copy, and don't get the two versions mixed up (grin).
Break your writing into lots of smaller and smaller scenes. It's so much easier to work on a small chunk than a 5000 word slab.
If you click on the details tab in the scene editor you'll find a checkbox with 'append to previous scene'. If that's ticked, for printing and exporting purposes only the ticked scene(s) and the first un-ticked scene and the previous one will be treated as one unit. (So if you want to print out or export three scenes you tick the second and third scene, etc. You may want to untick this box when you have finished printing or exporting.
Conflict between characters 1 & 2 could be
highlighted in red, while the resolution of Characters 3 & 4 could be
blued. Any reference to Character 2 & 4 could be yellowed, etc.
I can't even get the Characters names, locations, etc to be
highlighted, as you can do in scene content.

How to synchronise my files across a PC notebook and laptop?

Answer

How to transfer from my desktop to my laptop?

The folder that contains the .yw5/6/7 file for your project
also contains all the sub-folders and data. Copy that folder and all its
contents, including its sub-folders and their contents, and you're set. (If you follow the recommended practice of one project per folder it works well.) Just don't forget to copy it back before going back to the other machine.

How to turn on and off 'customizable columns? in the chapter browser. e.g. being able to turn on/off columns such as W, S, P, or Desc?

Just drag those column header widths to zero, and the program will remember.

Every time I add a new item/location, I get two error messages

Try this: * Clicking the Items or Locations menu and then clicking Add new
* Clicking the Scene tab, then clicking the Locations/Items tab in the
bottom panel, right-clicking and then choosing Add New
* Clicking Items or Locations menu, clicking View/Edit, and clicking
the Add New icon.

When clicking the 'next' button on the scene editing window, is the scene I?m exiting saved at that point?

It definitely saves. One writer says he never uses 'Save? only 'save and exit' or next/prev.

Can yWriter tell me how many pages there are in a particular scene or chapter?

Yes, Go to Reports>Synopsis>Full Synopsis