MacJournal wiped out all my content?!?

[PaperQueen]

HELP.

I updated MacJournal, and to my horror, see nearly all the notes in multiple journals BLANK—two years’ worth of notes just gone. The page titles are still there, but no content.

The data is critically important to my business. Where is it? How do I get it back?

FYI: I’ve been on the road for work, which means no Time Capsule backups for the past week. While on the road, I’ve been constantly working on four pages in one Journal—these, plus maybe four others in different journals still show data. My guess is that restoring from an older backup will mean sacrificing newer data...which is not an option.

I’ve dug through Mariner Software’s forums and blogs, but can’t find anything (other than angry posts from people saying Mariner is horrible about responding to problems....great....)

This is a nightmare.

OS 10.5.8
MacJournal 5.2
MacBook Pro 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

P.S. I’ve gone through every single journal, every single page. Only a handful still contain content...one that hasn’t been updated since summer 2008, others that were updated as recently as last evening. More than 90% of my content is gone.

 

[MacDawg]

Ouch... I just purchased MacJournal in the MacHeist Bundle
This doesn't give me much confidence

Sorry to hear about your loss and I hope you get it straightened out

 

[jotadeo]

I just found this:

http://marinersoftware.com/kb/?View=entry&EntryID=231

Don't know if it will help or not, but I thought I'd share. Good luck!

 

[PaperQueen]

I just found this:

http://marinersoftware.com/kb/?View=entry&EntryID=231

Don't know if it will help or not, but I thought I'd share. Good luck!

Thanks, jotadeo--it did help.

The solution (and I use the term loosely) was to spend several hours digging through multiple Time Capsule backups, search every page entered into the archived MacJournal copies, then when I found content, restore, then drag each page back into MJ on my laptop. It was a royal pain, taking nearly the entire day (which I needed for work).

As much as I like MJ, I no longer trust MJ. If there was at least an option to create a backup from the File menu, I could do that each day, saving a "good" copy to another location. As it stands now, there's not much a user can do to assure their content is safe, other than quitting the program repeatedly throughout the day (to assure backups are made), then dig through archived copies for every little piece of content if it all disappears again.

Yup. Looking for another program. Bummer.

 

[mysterytramp]

This might be too late, but did you try to use the "Recover entries ..." command under the Help menu?

mt

 

[PaperQueen]

This might be too late, but did you try to use the "Recover entries ..." command under the Help menu?

Tried that first—got nothing but blank pages.

 

[mysterytramp]

Tried that first—got nothing but blank pages.

Hate it when that happens ... MacJournal is one of a handful of apps that store user data in its Applications Support folder. One of the beauties of OS X is that it standardized the "Documents" folder and storing your data elsewhere just seems wrong.

Not that you'd necessarily be in a better place if your journal was in the Docs folder, but you might have had an easier time with Time Machine trying to recreate your old data.

mt

 

[macUserMans]

Hey guys, this is probably moot for you now, but I just had this problem and finally got it fixed. Mysterytramp pointed out that MacJournal keeps all its data in Application Support. I was able to copy the "Applications Support/MacJournal" folder from my Time Machine backups to my new local Applications Support folder.

Then within MacJournal, I went to Preferences >> Advanced >>

...to a section at the top of this window with a drop-down box that specifies what MacJ's main document is. I simply changed this to my backup "MacJournal Data" file, and everything was restored. No hunting for backups of individual files or anything.

Phew!

Thanks for the help on this end -- hope someone else gets something from this...

 

[chewbee]

Hey guys, this is probably moot for you now, but I just had this problem and finally got it fixed. Mysterytramp pointed out that MacJournal keeps all its data in Application Support. I was able to copy the "Applications Support/MacJournal" folder from my Time Machine backups to my new local Applications Support folder.

Then within MacJournal, I went to Preferences >> Advanced >>

...to a section at the top of this window with a drop-down box that specifies what MacJ's main document is. I simply changed this to my backup "MacJournal Data" file, and everything was restored. No hunting for backups of individual files or anything.

Phew!

Thanks for the help on this end -- hope someone else gets something from this...

How did you overcome the problelm that Time Machine doesn't show you the Library in teh past?