Is it possible to copy Notes from one project to another?

Question

We work with translators from a number of dialects. I’ve just gotten to the
point where I’ve created a separate Project for one of them; it was proving
difficult for people from the other dialects to process this one… The
problem is, when I copied the text, the Notes–about 170 of them–did not
follow. Is there a way to migrate Notes to a different project?

Answer 1

Notes are stored in XML files. “Notes_(username).xml” in Paratext 8 and “Comments_(username).xml” in Paratext 7. If you copy the note file to another project folder, those notes will appear in that new project. If the project text is different in the new project, the note flags might not be attached to words in the text but all appear at the beginning of the verse.

There are syntax changes between notes in Paratext 7 and Paratext 8, so you cannot copy a notes file from 7 into an 8 project and have it work. You might be able to make a backup to file of a 7 project, then restore from file in 8 and select the note files to have them transfer over.

Comments

@sewhite: Beautiful. Thanks.

Answer 2

You can do this. Open your note and click on the Multi button. This will popup a dialog box which will allow you to select the projects to which you want to copy the notes. However, when you copy a note to another project, only the first entry in the note will be copied (I guess the assumption here is that the first entry have the details of the note and the rest is a conversation that you have with the translation team, and you are not inadvertently sharing a discussion with a team with another by sharing the note).

AFAIK, You will have to do this one note at a time and it can take a lot of efforts in your case. (I’d be really interested in knowing if there is a way to bulk copying notes in ParaTExt)

Comments

Thanks for that, anon649716. It’s good to know there is a way to do it! Like
you, though, I’d be interested to know if there’s a way to do this for all
the notes in a book at once, rather than one one.