Need to regularly swap Paratext accounts

Question

A typesetter I know needs to switch Paratext user accounts back and forth between a work account and a personal account. I know that you can create a different windows user account and the information will be different when you log out and log back in.

While that may work for two different users, he doesn’t want to have to recreate his whole workspace and mess with two logins.

Is there a way to trick Paratext to starting up with a different user account?

Answer 1

Hi dhigby
one way is you can rename the RegistrationInfo.xml file which is located in Paratext user folder.
The file can be found in C:\Users\binoy\AppData\Local\Paratext80\RegistrationInfo.xml.

1. Close the Paratext if it is already opened
2. Let him copy the RegistrationInfo.xml from other user account and paste in the above folder
3. Rename it as some thing else like RegistrationInfo_personal.xml.
4. When he wants the personal Paratext registration to load, let him rename the existing RegistrationInfo.xml into RegistrationInfo_official.xml and
5. Change RegistrationInfo_personal.xml to RegistrationInfo.xml
   Now he can open the paratext.

This works
This may not be Paratext supported way. But I found this useful than switching to different user account
blessings
binoy

Comments

Thanks, binoy. This is exactly what I was looking for. I believe we can come up with a nice batch file to handle this.

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dhigby:

I believe we can come up with a nice batch file to handle this.

While this would be a very simple batch file, still, perhaps you could post it here once you’ve written it – it saves “reinventing the wheel”; or would be useful to a person who’s never written a batch file before.

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Example. Go to Paratext user folder

1. Make copy of RegistrationInfo.xml when logged in as user 1, and save it as User1info.xml
2. Make copy of RegistrationInfo.xml when logged in as user 2, save it as User2info.xml
3. In Notepad (or other text editor) create user1.bat with text:
   copy User1info.xml RegistrationInfo.xml
4. In Notepad create user2.bat with text:
   copy User2info.xml RegistrationInfo.xml
5. right click on each bat file and choose Send to desktop (create shortcut). You’ll now have two shortcuts on your desktop that will set RegistrationInfo.xml to the desired user’s name and code.