How do you recover a project from a copied My Paratext Projects folder?

Question

We have a project that is being revived, and the only backup we have is a copied My Paratext Folder on a USB drive (since the original computer with PT installed is long gone and it was never S/R'd.) What is the procedure/considerations for restoring that to a PT9 project?

Just copying the project folder to C:\My Paratext Projects didn't work. What else is needed? Or is this the wrong approach, and we should create a new project and copy and paste the SFM files, or the text out of a text editor, or...? What is the recommended (and safe) method?

(There are other backups like that around, too, so we might need to do this for more than one project.)

Answer 1

Hola. 

It is definitely important to know if your project is from Paratext 7 (or earlier).

If the project is from PT8 onward... you can just copy the project folder (just the folder, not the whole "My Paratext Projects") to the correct path, and close and reopen Paratext. If this does not work, your Paratext support can help you create a new project and try to recover all possible settings.

Some options if your project is from PT7 (or earlier):

In case you only need to retrieve the biblical text (.sfm files) and can mainly dispense with the history, the easiest option is to create a new project in PT9 and import the .sfm . Your Paratext support could support if you needed to retrieve something like tags or notes. But definitely the history could NOT be recovered.

If you need to recover all the project settings and history, what you need to do is to Migrate the project. For this you need to install Paratext 8 (only this version has the migration options). 
For your case you could copy the project folder (only the project folder, not all "My Paratext Projects") to the correct path and perform the migration as detailed here: https://paratext.org/paratext-help-and-support/migration/
Installer for Paratext 8 it's here: https://paratext.org/download/older-versions/

Saludos,
Pepe.

Comments

Thanks. Yes, most likely PT7 or earlier. Is there an easy way to tell by looking at the files/structure? There won't be notes or history to worry about, so Import Books should do the trick.

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Yes. If your folder with all projects is called "My Paratext Projects" then it is Paratext 7 or earlier. If it is Paratext 8 the folder would be called "My Paratext 8 Projects".

If you only want to retrieve the biblical text it will be very easy. Just create a new project and then, from the project menu, use the option Book Manager - Import Books.
From there browse to the project folder you have saved and select all the .SFM's you want to import.

Also remember that to use send/receive for the first time you must register the project and open the "Users and permissions" option for the first time.

Saludos,
Pepe.

Answer 2

Since copying the project folder didn't work, I assume that this is a Paratext 7 project.

I no longer have Paratext 7 on my system, but I know that the project format changed between Paratext 7 and Paratext 8.

If you have a Paratext 7 backup of the project, Paratext 9 should be able to restore that.

If you just have a Paratext 7 project folder, probably the best option is to create a new project in Paratext 9 and import the books from the Paratext 7 project folder.

Comments

Thanks. Yes, most likely PT7 or earlier. I had forgotten about the Import Books function. That should do the trick.