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Checklist for backing up Artisan® 6

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Need help with Historian™ 6? Check out this article.

We suggest using this easy checklist to ensure all important Artisan® content is backed up and doing this every so often as you continue to work in the software. This is especially useful if you are getting ready to move your projects and art kits to a new computer, otherwise if you ever need to recover anything that may have been corrupted or lost from its normal spot.

We suggest backing up:

  1. Projects
  2. Digital Art Kits
  3. Activation Codes
  4. Categories (if used)
  5. Tags (if used)
  6. Font Catalog (if used)
  7. Calendar Event Lists (if used)
  8. User Dictionary (if used)
  9. Downloaded Fonts (if used)
  10. Custom Page Projects (if used)

If you are moving Artisan to a new computer, you can follow this video series by the pixels2Pages team.

 

Projects

First you'll need to find where your Artisan projects are being stored. The easiest way to do this is to open Artisan then hover your mouse over a project on the Welcome page to look at the location. You can also click File in the upper left and look on the Recent Projects list. For reference, the default location is usually C:\Users\your username\Documents\Artisan Projects. mceclip0.png

Once you find where the projects are being stored you can follow these steps to back them up to an external hard drive:

  1. Plug in your external hard drive to the computer
  2. Open your computer's File Explorer and navigate to where your projects are being saved
  3. Right-click on the entire Artisan Projects folder and choose COPY (do not use CUT as these are large, complex files - by copying you have the original you can return to in case something doesn't move over correctly)
  4. Navigate to the external hard drive and PASTE the project's folder
  5. Please wait for the computer to process this copying request, make sure the screen does not go to sleep at this time or you'll need to start over
    NOTE: If you are simply backing up your content or want to keep your projects saved only to the external hard drive you can stop here, if you are moving to a new computer and want the projects moved over too please continue with the remaining steps
  6. Disconnect the external hard drive from the original computer, and plug it in to the new computer
  7. On the new computer open the File Explorer and go to your external hard drive
  8. Right-click on the Artisan Project folder and choose COPY (again, do not use CUT)
  9. Navigate to C:\Users\your username\Documents or wherever you want to save the project folder to, then you can PASTE the project's folder
    NOTE: We ask not to a cloud system like OneDrive or Dropbox - you can read this article for more information on how cloud systems such as those can negatively affect your projects, even causing you to lose precious work
  10. Please wait for the computer to process this copying request, make sure the screen does not go to sleep at this time or you'll need to start over

Once copied over, you can follow these steps to reopen your Artisan projects to show on your Welcome screen and the Recent Project list:

  1. Open Artisan
  2. Click File in the upper left
  3. Choose to Open Project
  4. Navigate to the location of where the project(s) is located
  5. Inside the project's folder, select the "project" file and Open it
  6. Let Artisan open the project again

When you open the Artisan Project on the new computer, if there are any missing pages or grayed out content this means something likely went wrong in the copying process. We suggest re-starting these steps from the original computer to get everything copied over again.

 

Digital Art Kits

For this process you will need to know where your art kits are being stored. To note, backing up your Digital Art Kits will also retain your content's Tags associated with each kit's elements. The easiest way to find them is to open Artisan, click Manage Content in the upper left, then on the left Library listing click on each folder to see it's save location at the top of the screen. The two default folders created from Artisan is:

  • C:\Users\Public\Documents\Commercial Art Kits
  • C:\Users\Your Username\Documents\Personal Art Kits

If you have other folders listed in your content manager other than the software's base content (Built-in Kits and Font Kits), you will want to back these up as well. In this example, there's an additional folder titled "pixels2Pages" and its save location is C:\Users\Public\Documents\Digital Art Kits\pixels2Pages
Artisan - Content Manager - Library folder location.JPG

If moving to a new computer, or want to keep them stored on an external hard drive, you can follow this article from the pixels2Pages team on how to reconnect the folders in Artisan.

 

Activation Codes

In order to unlock the Digital Art Kits you will also need their Activation Codes. This is especially important if you have very old art kits from Creative Memories as FOREVER may not have access to help you unlock them.

Here are the steps to back up your art kit Activation Codes:

  1. Open Artisan and in the upper left click Manage Content select "Activation Codes"
  2. In the pop-up window click the option to "Make a backup of my activation codes"
  3. It will create a Notepad document, in the upper left press File > Save As to keep a copy for your record
A6 Activation Codes.png

Then here are the steps to use your art kit Activation Codes:

  1. Find the saved Notepad document and open it
  2. Open Artisan and in the upper left click Manage Content
  3. At the top select Activation Codes
  4. In the pop-up window choose to "Add a new activation code"
  5. You will get another pop-up box, from step 1 COPY the entire Notepad document and PASTE it here
  6. Click OK - it will give you a list of all the kits those codes have unlocked in the software
A6 Add Activation Code.png

If you have the Activation Code but can't find the kit in your account Downloads, you can use the Art Kit Download Finder we have available.

 

Categories

**Please note the Categories will only copy over if the content is being placed in the exact same file location as it was on the old computer. Changing the content location will make the items disappear from the Categories**

  1. Open your computer's File Explorer and browse to the applicable location depending on which Artisan you are using:
    Artisan 6 - C:\Users\your username*\AppData**\Roaming\Forever\Artisan 6
    Artisan 5 - C:\Users\your username*\AppData**\Roaming\Forever\Artisan 5
    *This is your personal username on the computer.
    **This is a hidden folder so you may first need to unhide this to gain access to it. To do this please click on the link https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/view-hidden-files-and-folders-in-windows-97fbc472-c603-9d90-91d0-1166d1d9f4b5 and this will walk you through on finding the hidden items
  2. From this location find and COPY the KitFolders.xml file
  3. Navigate to your external hard drive and PASTE the file here

To recover your Categories, you can go to step 1's location and copy the saved KitFolders.xml file here. It will ask if you want to overwrite the existing file - click YES.

If you changed the location of where your art kits are saved (such as the computer has a different username, or you want to keep them on the external hard drive) you can read this article from the pixels2Pages team on how to recover them.

 

Tags

Artisan Tags will always follow the art kit content it was assigned to. For this process you will need to know where your art kits are being stored - please follow the steps above for Digital Art Kits to also back up your Tags.

 

Font Catalog

If you organize your installed fonts into groupings to easily find in Artisan, then please follow these steps so those groups will be backed up:

  1. Open your computer's File Explorer and browse to the applicable location depending on which Artisan you are using:
    Artisan 6 - C:\Users\your username*\AppData**\Roaming\Forever\Artisan 6
    Artisan 5 - C:\Users\your username*\AppData**\Roaming\Forever\Artisan 5
    *This is your personal username on the computer.
    **This is a hidden folder so you may first need to unhide this to gain access to it. To do this please click on the link https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/view-hidden-files-and-folders-in-windows-97fbc472-c603-9d90-91d0-1166d1d9f4b5 and this will walk you through on finding the hidden items
  2. From this location find and COPY the FontCatalog.xml file
  3. Navigate to your external hard drive and PASTE the file here

To recover your groups of fonts, go to the step 1's location and copy the saved FontCatalog.xml file here. It will ask if you want to overwrite the existing file - click YES.

 

Calendar Event Lists

If you created your own calendar list of events, you will also want to back this up so you have all the dates easily accessible.

  1. Open your computer's File Explorer and browse to the applicable location depending on which Artisan you are using:
    Artisan 6 - C:\Users\your username*\AppData**\Roaming\Forever\Artisan 6
    Artisan 5 - C:\Users\your username*\AppData**\Roaming\Forever\Artisan 5
    *This is your personal username on the computer.
    **This is a hidden folder so you may first need to unhide this to gain access to it. To do this please click on the link https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/view-hidden-files-and-folders-in-windows-97fbc472-c603-9d90-91d0-1166d1d9f4b5 and this will walk you through on finding the hidden items
  2. From this location find and COPY the entire Dates folder
  3. Navigate to your external hard drive and PASTE the folder here

To recover your event list(s), go to the step 1's location and copy the saved Dates folder here. It will ask if you want to overwrite the existing folder - click YES.

 

User Dictionary

If you have saved words to avoid spell checker from marking it wrong in your Artisan project.

  1. Open your computer's File Explorer and browse to the applicable location depending on which Artisan you are using:
    Artisan 6 - C:\Users\your username*\AppData**\Roaming\Forever\Artisan 6
    Artisan 5 - C:\Users\your username*\AppData**\Roaming\Forever\Artisan 5
    *This is your personal username on the computer.
    **This is a hidden folder so you may first need to unhide this to gain access to it. To do this please click on the link https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/view-hidden-files-and-folders-in-windows-97fbc472-c603-9d90-91d0-1166d1d9f4b5 and this will walk you through on finding the hidden items
  2. From this location find and COPY the UserDictionary.txt file
  3. Navigate to your external hard drive and PASTE the file here

To recover your personalized dictionary, go to the step 1's location and copy the saved UserDictionary.txt file here. It will ask if you want to overwrite the existing folder - click YES.

 

Downloaded Fonts

If you have purchased and downloaded fonts onto your computer, you will also want to copy the Fonts folder to the new computer.

  1. Open your File Explorer and browse to C:\Windows
  2. Right click on the Fonts folder and copy it
  3. Browse to the external hard drive and paste here
  4. Plug external hard drive to new computer
  5. Open File Explorer and browse to external hard drive
  6. Open the saved Fonts folder here
  7. Select all the fonts (click one, then press Ctrl + A on the keyboard)
  8. Right click on any of the selected fonts and select Install
    NOTE: If you have Windows 11 you will need to select 'Show more options' then 'Install for all users'

 

Custom Page Projects

If you have created your own custom page projects please follow these steps:

  1. Open your computer's File Explorer and browse to the applicable location depending on which Artisan you are using:
    Artisan 6 - C:\Users\your username*\AppData**\Roaming\Forever\Artisan 6
    Artisan 5 - C:\Users\your username*\AppData**\Roaming\Forever\Artisan 5
    *This is your personal username on the computer.
    **This is a hidden folder so you may first need to unhide this to gain access to it. To do this please click on the link https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/view-hidden-files-and-folders-in-windows-97fbc472-c603-9d90-91d0-1166d1d9f4b5 and this will walk you through on finding the hidden items
  2. From this location find and COPY the CustomPageProjects.xml file
  3. Navigate to your external hard drive and PASTE the file here

To recover your personalized dictionary, go to the step 1's location and copy the saved CustomPageProjects.xml file here. It will ask if you want to overwrite the existing folder - click YES.

 

Need help with Historian™ 6? Check out this article.

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