Update to from M10 to 141 not seeing notebook.dat file

bnp

Update to from M10 to 141 not seeing notebook.dat file

Postby bnp » Wed Feb 09, 2011 5:14 pm

followed new install instructions below.

New install does note seem to find my notebook.dat. The notebook.dat does contain my old set of notes. If anyone could point me in the correct directions ... would appreciate.
-bruce


2011-02-09
1. Backup your CintaNotes settings and database to a safe, backup folder. This is not strictly needed but we want to be safe. With backup I mean make a copy, so we leave the files in the original location, but we also have a copy in a safe place.
2. Make sure CintaNotes is *not* running, so if it's running exit it.
3. Download and unzip the new portable CintaNotes version to a temporary folder.
4. Replace, that is, copy from the temporary folder and overwrite the existing
files/folders in the actual location you're using:
4.a cintanotes.exe
4.b The lang folder and its content
4.c The help folder and its content (not strictly needed in practice)
4.d The readme.txt file (non strictly needed in practice)
5. Done.

Now the next time you start CintaNotes, on this first run of the new cintanotes.exe version, the existing cintanotes.settings file will be reused and the new parameters will be inserted automatically in it.
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Re: Update to from M10 to 141 not seeing notebook.dat file

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Wed Feb 09, 2011 6:54 pm

Support for CintaNotes Beta *.dat files was dropped in version 1.3 in order to significantly reduce executable size.
You need to get an older version of CintaNotes (say 1.2), use it to import the dat file and autoconvert it into *.db.
After that you will be able to use this .db file with the latest version of CintaNotes.

Please find portable version of CintaNotes 1.2 in attachment. All you need to do is extract the zip, copy the *.dat file into this folder, and run cintanotes.exe. cintanotes.db will be created from your notebook.dat.
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CintaNotes_1_2.zip
(606.21 KiB) Downloaded 2284 times
Alex
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Re: Update to from M10 to 141 not seeing notebook.dat file

Postby ale » Wed Feb 09, 2011 7:03 pm

Hello bruce, welcome to the forum and sorry for the problem you experienced. I wrote the mini guide you reported for a user that was updating from CintaNotes 1.4 to 1.4.1. The instructions are working for any releases reasonably recent, and I'll try to explain why they didn't in your situation.

When CintaNotes was born, in its beta stage, it used a format for the notebook file that was basically a text based format, this is the case for your CintaNotes version and for your "notebook.dat" file. Later CintaNotes moved to a SQLite database, the format that is currently used, the notes file is now "cintanotes.db". Of course there was a way to change from the old format to the new better format (I'll explain this mechanism in a moment). The developer dropped the support for the old format from the recent CintaNotes versions believing maybe that all users had the notebook updated. And this is your "problem", upgrading from a very "old" CintaNotes version to a very new one skipping all the releases between the two.

CintaNotes dropped support for the old format in version 1.3. So let's see what would happen if you updated from your version to, let's say for example 1.2 (1.2 < 1.3), which still had the support for importing the old format. You had two ways to update the notebook.

1. Would be to use the File > Import... menu command

OR

2. This second way was especially useful for users of the portable version: we had to unzip the portable install, then put the "notebook.dat" in the unzipped folder together with cintanotes.exe and then launch CintaNotes. On this first execution, CN would automatically import all the notes from notebook.dat to cintanotes.db and then after finishing, notebook.dat was renamed to notebook.imported.dat

Finally, I personally see the solution to your problem as follows: instead to upgrade straight from your version to the latest, use a two step process. Firstly update from your version to 1.1 or 1.2 (which would let to import or convert to the new format) and then from 1.1/1.2 to the latest. A lot of words to explain everything but not really difficult in practice. I tried to explain because maybe other people are in the same situation.

Of course the developer will hopefully guide you better as soon as he has the chance to read your message or confirm my theory :D and point you to a 1.1/1.2 install to make the two step update.

Edit: ooppsss I see now the developer already replied but I will post it anyway, hopefully the theory still holds true and may be useful :D
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Re: Update to from M10 to 141 not seeing notebook.dat file

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Wed Feb 09, 2011 7:11 pm

Ale, as usual you are giving much more user-friendly explanations than me ;) I think it is a perfect addition to my response.
The other possible solution would be to use the Export to XML command of the old CintaNotes Beta installation.
Alex
bnp

Re: Update to from M10 to 141 not seeing notebook.dat file

Postby bnp » Wed Feb 09, 2011 10:42 pm

Thanks to all!! With support and response like this it must be great software. I am sorry I did not stay abreast of changes sooner.
regards
-bruce
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Re: Update to from M10 to 141 not seeing notebook.dat file

Postby Guest » Tue Mar 29, 2011 2:23 pm

I want to thank you for this detailed (and well working!) explanaition. :D

I used an old relase of CN, M10.5, and it had always worked very fine. Today I updated to rel. 1.4.2 and it seemed I had lost all my notes.

Anyway, after carefully reading the Readme file I discovered the program creates bakup. I found one of them and opened with a text editor. Yes, all my notes were there!! :P

The I found this thread, that helped me to recover all.

Just a tip, I would suggest you to add a note to the web site (http://cintanotes.com/index.html), to advice the users updating from a very old (but very good ;) version to the latest.

Thanks, Seba_F80
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Re: Update to from M10 to 141 not seeing notebook.dat file

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Tue Apr 05, 2011 6:44 am

Hi Seba_F80,

thanks for your suggestion!
The help to the next version of CintaNotes will contain the following line in the section "Installing and Upgrading CintaNotes":

Upgrading from CintaNotes Beta to CintaNotes 1.X is a bit more difficult because CintaNotes 1.3 dropped support for the Beta .dat file format. So you need to export your notes to an XML file first, and after installation of the latest version re-import it using the File / Import command.
Alex

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