Lost Source Files.

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Anil Govind
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2016 5:45 am

Lost Source Files.

Unread post by Anil Govind »

I'm on PE v7.3.5 Build 4434 on a Windows 10 system.

The source files of my project are corrupted/inaccessible/missing.
While the jury is out on whether that disk can be recovered, I have the last compiled output.
Is there a way to recreate the source files from these?

Thanks for your help.
ag :frustration:
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Tim Green
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Re: Lost Source Files.

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Anil,

Sorry to hear about your loss... :? Your best bet for repairing the disk and getting your data back is probably Spinrite. It costs a fair bit, but still much, much less than all the so-called "data recovery" services:

https://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

You may need to put the disk into an older computer for Spinrite to be able to access it. You don't need to mount the disk anywhere. Spinrite comes with its own low-level DOS version and it works directly on the sectors on the disk, so it doesn't actually need to read the file system at all.

On getting your data back from your published output, you can recover with formatted text from pretty much anything except PDF, but it will involve varying amounts of work. You will have to re-create things like toggles after importing and you will generally also need to re-create the TOC structure. See the chapter on importing data here for full details:

https://helpandmanual.com/help/index.ht ... rtdata.htm
  • WebHelp:
    Use the HTML + TXT files import option. You will have a fair amount of editing after importing depending on the skin you used.
  • Word DOCX:
    Save as RTF in Word first, then import.
  • ePub or Kindle/Mobi:
    Change the extension of the eBook file to .zip, then unzip it and import the HTML topic files.
  • PDF:
    Use Adobe Reader to save the PDF as plain text, then import the text files.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
Anil Govind
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2016 5:45 am

Re: Lost Source Files.

Unread post by Anil Govind »

Hi Tim,

Thank you for the prompt and detailed response.
I've got the Webhelp output (my bad, didn't mention that earlier), and was really hoping for a best practice guide (specifically with Webhelp) when faced with such situations (assuming others have been on this path before :) .)
Will take it from here. Thanks again!

Regards
ag
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