Installing the program won't remove any data unless you somehow did a windows install right to the data directory (Documents/BeerSmith2). Even in that case the backups (numbered ones) are still present. The BeerSmith program should be installed to the Program Files (or Applications directory on Mac) which will not touch your default data directory which is Documents/BeerSmith2.
In most cases the following procedure will correct any data issues:
- Rename your "Documents/BeerSmith2" directory to something else like "OldBeerSmith" which saves your data
- Make sure you have the latest version of BeerSmith 2 installed from the main download page
- Restart BeerSmith2 - which will create a new BeerSmith 2 directory with the sample recipes in it
- You will likely have to enter your registration key again
- Once you have BeerSmith running again, use the Open command to open your old Recipe.bsmx file
that is now in your "OldBeerSmith" directory and then copy/paste any recipes you need into
your new "My Recipes" folder
- You can do the same with Equipment.bsmx, Hops.bsmx, etc... if you have added items beyond
those that came with BeerSmith 2
- If you can't open one of the files (Recipe.bsmx for example), you can also try opening the numbered
backups (Recipe1.bsmx, Recipe2.bsmx, etc...) - these contain older copies of the original.
- Let me know if you have any problems - and please keep your "OldBeerSmith" directory around
(the one you renamed earlier) as it will have all of your data in it!
Another possible case is that you had your data stored somewhere else (not likely but you can change the storage location for data using File->Change Documents Directory). In this case the data would still be in the "old" location in a set of BSMX files. You could load the backups similar to the results below.
Brad