Restore Overwritten Output?

[Mark Johnson]

I generated the Windows version of my printed documentation and then spent the next few days updating the table of contents and index to compensate for Flare's conversion errors (intermittent microscopic text etc.) and MS Word's repagination habit. It is a 2700 page document. Very frustrating. I finally got the page numbers to match up and saved with a new file name.

Then, I changed the conditional tag to Macintosh and generated output again. Whoops! It overwrote my Windows Word file. Looks like Flare completely wiped our the output folder. Should have saved in a different folder I guess.

Does anyone know if I can get that back? I did a search and couldn't find any old temp or autosave files.

Thanks for your help,
Mark

[alaltenburg]

When you do a new build, it always deletes out the old output before creating the new one. I wrote a .bat file so all my projects build and then save to another folder, so I can keep the backup for those cakes when I screw up the new build.

I don't know of a way to get the old versions back. Sorry.

Andrea

[Nita Beck]

Mark,

If I understand your situation correctly, it sounds like you've got one target defined, not two, correct? If that is the case, then alas, I agree that I don't think there's a way for you to get back the prior build.

However, I have a suggestion going forward.

Set up two targets: one for Windows and another for Macintosh. The only differences between the two will be their names and how you've conditionalized (yikes, what a verb) them. I think then that when you build these targets, you'll have two folders in the Output folder, one Windows (or whatever you named that target), the other Macintosh (or whatever you named that target).

I *think* I've got this right (and all you experts out there, please do correct me if I'm leading Mark down the proverbial garden path). When I single-source to WebHelp and PDF, I've got two targets, and when I build, each one ends up in its own folder within the Output folder. I don't see why that can't be the case for you, if you set up two different targets, even if they're producing the same kind of output. (Actually, I've got three targets. I've got a "ReviewDraft" target that outputs to Word. That target builds to its own output folder, too.)

Wish I could have helped your retrieve a couple of days' work.

Nita

p.s. I don't use destinations, but -- to any of you real Flare experts out there -- should he be using destinations to publish to different places so this doesn't happen to him again?

[wclass]

Does anyone know if I can get that back? I did a search and couldn't find any old temp or autosave files.

Look in:
Documents and Settings\<your name>\Local Settings\Temp
and you might be lucky to find an interim version. There might be files with temp names rather than the original file name you had - look for something about the right size and date. Also look in Documents and Settings\<your name>\Application Date\Microsoft\Word as this is the default place for autorecover files.

In general, I agree with the others that separate targets are the way to go. And yes, Destinations are a handy way to put a copy of the output somewhere else. I would suggest generating to output to make sure the document is right, and then publish to a known location/destination before you do further work on it.

[SteveS]

A confusing issue with Flare is the diference between building a project and publishing it.

A build does just that, it builds the project and creates output, nested within Flare's directory structure.

Publish is the next step - Flare builds the project and then adds the build to a place you specify.

It's ironic that sometimes we have to suggest 'cleaning' a project to make sure the latest content is what you are looking at, but that's the diference between webhelp delivery and printed documents...

I agree with the other suggestions - create 2 different targets, 1 for mac and the other for PC.