Simpler Is Better

After my laptop unexpectedly crashed last year, I congratulated myself on having saved everything on the cloud.

However, I didn’t consider the format some of my work was saved in.

More than 10 years ago, I bought the license for one of those special word editors for writers – and what a useful thing it was indeed, allowing you to easily structure your book, have binders with notes on characters, places and other things like that – all in the same word editor. Very convenient.

Except it of course saved everything in its own proprietary format.

Which gave rise to some heart-beating anxiety when I installed the software on my new laptop last week.

All my previous laptops had run Windows. This new one is a Mac. That’s how I found out (while contacting client support, because I had some trouble with the software) that 10 years ago I hadn’t bought the licence for any operating system, just for Windows. So now I had basically lost access to my licence, unless I was willing to pay a certain fee and acquire the Mac licence too. But even with the trial version I should be able to read and retrieve my work, right?

Wrong.

The downloaded software was the newest version, not the one I had had on the old laptop (although I had updated it a couple of times), and it didn’t recognise the old proprietary files. (The old versions wouldn’t work on my Mac. I tried).

The files being saved on the cloud, that also created a problem – according to the client support lady who replied to my e-mail/cry for help.

Following her step-by-step advice, I eventually managed to have the software import and convert the old files, and I subsequently exported them, one by one, to .rtf format. It was a busy evening. Six WIPs in total, among which even a TV series project that I had forgotten about.

I won’t pay the difference to get the Mac licence. After the scare of almost losing my work because it was ‘locked’ in that proprietary format, I decided simpler was better. What if the software creator had gone bankrupt and there was no possibility to download the software anymore and no client support either? I shudder to think of that possibility.

So it’s back to the old word editors and to folders within folders of reference stuff for each WIP.

It’s safer like this.

Ps – I still save my work in the cloud.
Safety all the way :))