Revert after import

Question

A user imported a book into the wrong project. An Arabic script (AS) book was imported into the Roman script (RS) project - both projects were open at the time, and the wrong one was selected. So in the RS project I select Project History. I can see the change to the book (ISA), and the second item in the history says “before importing books”. So I just want to restore that version. But I can’t find any way to do it! If I select the second item in the history, I would expect the “Revert Books…” button in the toolbar to be available, but it is greyed out. I still have the .BAK file in the project folder, which I quickly made a copy of. It looks like it has a time around the time of the import, and looking at it in a text editor, it seems to be the right RS text.

So should I import that .BAK file to restore the RS text, or is there another way to restore the book? If I click on the ISA link in the project history, it pulls up the Compare Texts window and shows me the change from RS to AS. So I guess I could copy the RS text a chapter at a time for the Compare Texts window, and paste it into the project, but that sounds more dangerous than restoring the .BAK file.

But why can’t I revert the book? In the history entry is says:

ISA Isaiah 1-66
Properties and Settings

So was there maybe something in the settings that changed that prevents me from reverting? Or did it try to convert the project to an AS project?

Thanks for any pointers.

Answer 1

It looks like the only reason that Revert Books becomes disabled is if you do not have administrator rights on the project.

Comments

OK, so the user wasn’t administrator, so that explains it. I guess I was reluctant to do a S/R with the “messed up” project, but that probably would have been best - do S/R, pick it up on the Admin’s computer, and then revert the book. I was hoping that there was a way that the user could undo the bad thing he just did, but I guess it makes more sense to just send the problem with S/R to the Admin to fix.

Answer 2

Well, I went ahead and imported the .BAK file, and I think all’s well that ends well.

But I’m very concerned that the user made a significant error, and that there was no simple way (that I could find) from within Paratext to roll back that error. Can anyone explain why I was not able to revert that book to its previous state from the project history?

Answer 3

If a user make an error like this, I recommend they simply close PT, delete the project folder, and then re-download the project from the internet. Obviously they will loose any work thy may have done since their last S/R, but it really is much cleaner an easier.