Where is my Original Information?

[Scott Daymond]

Message originally posted to our old message board on 24 August 2003 by Scott Daymond
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Well, I spent a couple hours with the software saturday carefully crafting an IPA I had been thinking of brewing. I brewed it today and it is happilly fermenter away! However, after the brew-day I came back to the recipe to do a couple "what-ifs" to it, and closed the program without setting my ingredients amounts back to the original.

The program did not ask me if I wanted to save the changes, or notify me that I had made any, it just saved everything!

Now, I cannot for the life of me remember what exact amounts I used in the initial recipe (did not print it out). How can I get my original information back?

Is this something you will fix? Do I need to make duplicate recipes to do "what-ifs" to a recipe and not worry about losing the original information?

Please, I am very upset about losing the original information in today's brew. How can I get it back??? -

Scott

[BeerSmith]

Reply originally posted 25 Aug on our old message board
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Scott,

  The program saves your changes by default so you don't lose any new work, so I do recommend saving an "as brewed" copy before running "what-ifs".

 We recommend using the "Copy to Brew Log" command to save your recipes to the brew log after each brewing session so you will have a permanent copy of your recipes "as brewed" before running "what-ifs".

 However, all may not be lost. BeerSmith periodically makes backups of all of your tables. Depending on when you made your original recipe you may be able to recover it using the "Recover Table" command on the "File" menu.

 Try running the "Recover Table" command and see if there is a backup recipe file with a time and date after you made your original recipe but before you ran your "what-ifs". If you RECOVER one of these recipe tables, be warned that it will OVERWRITE your current My Recipes, however. MAKE SURE you save the current "My Recipes" view off first either using the "Export As" command or by answering YES when prompted to save a copy of the current table (the Recover Table command will also prompt you to save a copy before it overwrites).

 In many cases the Recover Table command will let you recover from major problems. -- Please email if you need help merging in any new data after recovering the old.

Thanks!
Brad
www.beersmith.com

[Scott Daymond]

Originally posted on 25 Aug 2003 to our old message server
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Thanks for your reply Brad.

After reading your new statement on the homepage I see that this is actually considered a feature (not prompting me about changes).

While I can understand this for anything new (recips, ingredients, etc) I certainly do not undertsand it for existing items that have been modified. Almost every program on the planet (brewing or otherwise) will let me know I have made changes, ask me whether I want to save them, save them to something else, or cancel the changes.

This is for good reason, to avoid the exact situation that I encountered. I really don't appreciate a program that assumes everything I modified should be saved and overwrite the original. What happens when some of my brew buddies come over and start messing around with my recipes (as they are all on my brew-house computer)?

Well,anyway, I'll try this restore procedure you mentioned but if you would like one user's opinion, that's a LOT more work than a simple nag dialog would have been (for me at least).

Do you think you will reconsider this for existing items that have been modified? I don't want to go through this again...

TIA - Scott

[BeerSmith]

Reply originally posted on 25 Aug 2003
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Thanks Scott!

Well you do always have the option of pressing the "Cancel" button or using the UNDO feature to undo any changes you have made before you close out the program -- something that the other major beer programs do NOT have. Note that the undo also works for your brewing buddies.

So far most people like the interface, but I can see how it could cause problems with "what-ifs".

Perhaps I could put in "Confirm" as an option -- i.e. it would confirm edits or deletes if you have the "Confirm" option set and save by default if you don't have the "Confirm" option set?

Thanks - Brad

[BeerSmith]

Another follow up,
 I implemented the "Confirm changes before saving recipe" option in BeerSmith 1.2 which should be available in early October.  This should address concerns over the default behavior which is to save all changes made to recipes.

 The option (Advanced page, Options command on the Tools menu) in version 1.2 if checked asks if you wish to save changes when an open recipe is closed without pressing the "OK" or "Cancel" buttons.  If it is not checked, the default behavior is to save all changes.

For more see...
 http://www.beersmith.com/whats_new_in_1_2.htm

Cheers!
Brad