BACKING UP EXISTING INFORMATION
- The first steps you need to take before you move your Artisan® 6 software to a new computer are to make backup copies of your projects, content (digital art kits), and the Activation Codes for your digital art kits.
- To find the location of your projects so you can copy them to an external hard drive, open Artisan® on your current computer and hover over a project on the Welcome screen. You should see the filename of the project display next to the mouse pointer. Most of the time, projects are stored at C:\Users\{your username}\Documents\Artisan Projects.
- Once you find the location of your Artisan® projects, open File Explorer, navigate to the folder with your Artisan® projects, plug your external hard drive into your current computer, copy that folder (right-click and select “Copy”), and paste the folder onto the external hard drive. It may take several minutes for the copy and paste operations to complete, depending on the number and size of your projects.
- To find the location of your Content (digital art kits), go back to Artisan® and click “Manage Content." In your Content Manager, click on the “Commercial Art Kits” folder listed on the left. The exact location of the folder with your art kits will display at the top of the main screen:
NOTE: If you have organized your content into various folders, you will need to find the location of each folder listed in your Library on the left. Do not worry about Built-In kits; they are automatically installed with each installation of Artisan®.
- Once you have located all your Content, go back to File Explorer, navigate to the folder with your Content, copy that folder (right-click and select “Copy”), and paste the folder onto the external hard drive. Repeat these steps for every Content folder you have.
- To find your Activation Codes for your digital art kits, click on “Activation Codes” (1) in the Content Manager section of Artisan®. When the pop-up window displays, click on “Make a backup copy of my codes” (2).
Save this document to the external hard drive.
NOTE: We recommend that you always have a copy of this some place other than your computer – two possibilities are saving these codes on an external hard drive or emailing the codes to yourself.
- Eject the external hard drive before disconnecting it from your old computer so that you do not accidentally lose anything you just copied. (You could also shut down your old computer and wait for that process to complete before you disconnect the external hard drive.)
INSTALLING ARTISAN® ON YOUR NEW MACHINE
NOTE: Windows 11 users, to ensure a smooth installation of Artisan 6, please follow the steps in this Microsoft article under the section to enable .NET Framework 3.5 on your computer. Once installed, you can proceed with these steps below to install Artisan 6 on your computer.
- Start up the new machine and go to www.forever.com/downloads
- Click the button to "Download Artisan 6"
- When the download is complete, double-click the “Artisan6Setup.exe” file.
- Follow the steps in the Install Shield Wizard to install Artisan.
- Open Artisan 6, it will give you a Welcome screen, click the "Continue" button:
- It will ask you to sign in, please use the FOREVER account email and password that purchased or was gifted Artisan 6 (if you use a different login it will start a free trial period you cannot cancel):
- You will get a confirmation message with a successful login, if you get an error message please contact us at support@forever.com or 1-888-FOREVER (367-3837) for assistance:
- It will go through the process of updating Artisan 6's database, depending on how many art kits you have this can take a few hours to complete - make sure the computer does NOT go to sleep during this time!
- After the database (and cleanup) you will get the message that Artisan 6 is ready to use - click "Finish" to get started!
INSTALLING COPIED CONTENT ON YOUR NEW MACHINE
- Once Artisan® has been installed and activated, plug your external hard drive into your new computer.
- Open File Explorer and go to C:\Users\{your username}\Documents.
- Create a new folder in Documents called “Artisan® Projects."
- Find the folder of Artisan® projects you copied from your old machine on the external hard drive and copy that file into the new Artisan® Projects folder. (This could take several minutes depending on the number and size of the Artisan® projects you are copying.)
- Once your Artisan® projects have been copied, go to C:\Users\Public\Documents and create a folder called “Commercial Art Kits”.
- Find the folder of digital art kits that you copied from your old machine on the external hard drive and copy that file into the new Commercial Art Kits folder.
- Once your digital art kits have been copied, open Artisan® and go to Content Manager.
- Click on the drop-down by “Library” and choose “Add folder to library”.
- Browse to the location of your Commercial Art Kits folder, select the folder and click “OK."
- Click “Activation Codes” at the top of the Content Manager window.
- Click on “Add a new activation code” in the pop-up window.
- In File Explorer, open the file of activation codes you copied from your old computer.
- Select all the codes in the file, right-click, and choose “Copy."
- Paste these codes into the window in Artisan® and click “OK."
All of your content is now installed on your new machine. Remember to eject the external hard drive before you disconnect it from your new computer.
Click here for a checklist for Artisan® and Historian™ when moving to a new computer.
Please reach out to FOREVER® Support (1-888-FOREVER or support@forever.com) with any questions about the instructions above.