Today is a Great Day to Back Up Your Script Collection
Recently, I wrote a post pointing out some new bugs in InDesign 17.2. For those folks who had already updated InDesign to this version and were having problems with the new bugs, I suggested using the Creative Cloud app to roll back to version 17.1. However, I need to point out that doing so is also potentially perilous, as you will lose customizations ranging from workspaces to scripts.
When you start the roll-back process, the Creative Cloud app does warn you, but probably not enough.
Ideally, it would list everything that will be wiped out when you roll back, so you can take proper precautions. Maybe even add a touch of blood red to the design of the dialog box to trigger our lizard brains to recognize there is inherent danger here.
In my case, I carelessly rolled back to 17.1 just to quickly test and document the process. I didn’t bother to back up anything. To my brief horror, when I launched 17.1 and opened the Scripts panel to run one of my favorite scripts, the User folder was completely empty.
In the default workspace, no one can hear you scream.
I normally keep over 600 scripts in there. That collection is the fruit of years of effort to find, install, test, and organize scripts from countless sources. Seeing that empty folder and the thought of losing everything it contained, just because of a moment’s carelessness stunned me. I briefly considered ditching it all and buying a beet farm. But then I remembered that I had, in fact, backed up all my scripts in multiple places because they are so indispensable.
A quick copy and paste of the folders into the right location and I was back in business.
So, my little heart-stopping story had a happy ending. But I share it as a cautionary tale. If you have a script collection too, please be sure it’s backed up on a regular basis. Because even if you never encounter this exact same roll-back/wipeout scenario, you never want to feel that gut punch of looking at an empty Scripts panel in InDesign.
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Or Adobe could finally try to recognize the pain they cause so many users by not automatically preserving settings in either direction. Not that I’m advocating not doing one’s own backups, but this particular nuisance should not exist in the first place.
Signed,
Lamenting Designer
I was bitten by the same bug. I had a backup copy of my scripts, but I was shocked that all my preferences and workspaces were wiped out.
Another reason to keep copies of the last few major releases of InDesign installed. In this case, I could simply delete version 17.1 entirely and install a fresh copy of 17.2. That new install did pick up the settings from the previous version and I was back in business again. Fortunately preferences of workspaces usually don’t change very often…
Too late for me – just did the same unfortunate thing and lost a nice collection of scripts. Guess it’s one of those mishaps that reminds you of doing backups more regularly ;)
As a matter of routine, I never allow updates to replace the current working version. Once I’m settled into production with the new version, and I have verified everything that should be there _is_ there, I’ll relax a bit. Even so, I generally uninstall only versions that are two or more generations behind the one I’m using. Just in case.
It’s not as if disk space is expensive anymore. Even the fastest catch-me-if-you-can NVMe drives cost less per GB than HDDs were just a few years ago. For the big space hogs like images and videos I have separate HDDs (at around $0.011/GB, you can buy a few extras to use as paperweights) and SATA SSDs.