Changing an Auxiliary project in Paratext to a Standard Translation project

Question

I have a situation where a translation project for a completely separate language was created as an Auxiliary project of another project. (I’m not sure why... probably just lack of training.) I have been made administrator of that project. (There is, of course, only one project registration between them, since an Auxiliary project shares the registration of its parent.) I see that in the Project Properties of the Auxiliary project the type of project field is still active and looks like it would allow me to change it to Standard Translation. So I’m tempted to just go ahead and do that, but thought I would ask your advice first. Is this allowed? If I do this, will it immediately ask me to create the registration? If so, I might want to have the original administrator make the change, since he’s in a different organization.

Anything else to be aware of in making this change?

Answer 1

I just noticed that when I look at the Registration tab of the parent project in the registry that both the Standard and Auxiliary projects are listed there, and on the three-dot menu for the Auxiliary project there is an option Unlink... It seems to me that changing the registration type in the Project Properties in Paratext would probably be a more straightforward way of accomplishing this task, but I mention it, just in case it has a role to play.

Comments

Hello.
You can make the change with the process you mentioned at the beginning, from the "Project Properties" window and change the project type from Auxiliary to Standard. When you do this you will see that at the bottom it will ask you to register the project. This is why it should be done by a user with permissions to register projects.

An auxiliary project has its own list of users (which may be different from the standard project), when you change from Auxiliary to Standard you should not have any changes regarding user access to the project.

Saludos,
Pepe.

Answer 2

I just checked and I don't see that "unlink" option. I wonder if somehow that project was originally set up as a Standard project, and made an Auxiliary later. That certainly seems the place to start, but it's not something I have any experience with.

I recently tried to move an Auxiliary project in just this sort of way. Yes, changing it to Standard did require me register it. After that happened, the other people on the project could no longer S/R with it.

I then worked with Phil L. to see what the problem was. We recreated the same situation with a test project, and after an Aux->Standard change things worked perfectly fine and S/R was okay. So there might have been some issue with my actual project that went beyond just the Aux->Standard switch.

I was able to remove the Standard project and revert myself to the same version as the rest of the team was using. So I don't think there's a huge possibility of messing things up too much. In the future I'd probably have everyone do a S/R and stop work while I did the switch. Then, if they couldn't S/R afterward, I'd have them delete the project from their machines and re-download it.

Comments

I was thinking along those same lines: have everybody S/R and stop work, Admin receives everything, (maybe even have the Admin make a backup to .zip file, just in case all else fails), Admin makes the change to Standard Translation, I assume Paratext would then ask to create the registration (click link and fill out registration in the registry), Admin back in Paratext should see the new registration, Admin adds the other members of the project (I assume he would be the only user to start with) and does S/R. At this point, I assume the project users wouldn't be able to S/R (since it completely changed under them). I assume they would have to delete the old project and S/R to receive the new project. I'd appreciate it if anyone could further confirm this proposal.

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I think what you've written is a worse-case scenario. The fact that the worst case is possible is good!

1) Yes, have everyone S/R before you start. And I'd probably back up the entire folder from inside the "My PT 8 Projects" folder. A zip file would lose all your history. [I really don't think you'll need this, but it's always better to be safe.]

2) Yes, I'm almost certain that you'll need to register the project on the Registry.

3) I think it's quite possible as soon as you switch over, everything will work as normal and none of the team members will even notice the change.

4) But if they can't S/R, I think they may simply need to delete the project from their machine, then go to S/R and re-download it. Based on my experience, the Standard project I moved to still had everyone associated with it--I didn't have to reassign anyone.