Add fills from Designer Pro CD & Layout backup

Hi

How do I add those CD fills to the gallery? I noticed they are all stored in a cab file with their file extensions a bit changed, so I guess I could mass rename them and add manually, but I was wondering if there is any clean way of doing it? I don't want to reinstall, because I want to keep my toolbars and other settings...

...which brings me to my second question... how do I save the layout I created? I know new version is about to be released, and I would like to be able to back the layout up somehow and import, so I don't have to go through it all manually again. Anything I can do about it? I already tried backing up the entire xara registry, but didn't help...

Thanks!

Not sure about the CD fills but to save a layout that you can use as a template, create the layout, make any changes you want, and then File > Save Template.

Name your layout/template and save.

Once you do this, the template will be available in File > New... (and then select your template from the list).

So templates also save the toolbar positions and icons and all that?? Didn't know that! I'm really going to try that next time I reinstall :) thanks!

No, Gary has misinterpreted your use of the word "layout". He thought you meant a web site layout, not the layout of the button bars.

As a first attempt, you should run the install program on the CD and see if it gives you an option to just install the content into your existing installation. I'm pretty sure that the CD installer has had this option at some point but I'm not certain it is still there.

If this option isn't available then it is still possible but to keep the various settings will require a few complex steps including messing about with the registry so you should only attempt this if you are confident with these sorts of operations and you don't mind having to re-install DesignerPro if something goes wrong.

The layout of the button bars (and position of galleries) is stored in the registry. In:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Xara\XtremePro\8.1 (or whatever version you are using)

...is a key called BarsNormal (there will also be a separate BarsFull key if you have used fullscreen mode). Backing up these keys should allow you to restore the bars layout after re-installing the program but the data in these keys is highly specific to the exact version of the program and often changes, even between patch releases, so you have to be careful to install exactly the same version before restoring the registry settings.

There is also a key called Options which holds most of the global program settings. The content (and default values) of this also changes between versions but the changes are less likely to break anything. If you back this up and restore it after a patch update then you may miss out on important changes to values which can't be set directly in the program. The effect of this could be anything from "no apparent change" to "program crashes during startup" (not very likely, but theoretically possible) so you should really only do this with exactly the same program version as above.

So, the following process should work but I can give no guarantees, and if it doesn't you will need to set up your bar layouts again (and may need to uninstall and re-install again first to be on the safe side):

Make sure you have backups of any template documents you may have created (you can just create a new document from the template and simply save it somewhere else).
Make a note of the full version number in the Help/About dialog.
Quit DesignerPro.
Export the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Xara\XtremePro\8.1\Bars Normal key to a .reg file. Also export the BarsFull key (to a separate file) if it exists.
Uninstall DesignerPro.
Install DesignerPro from the CD making sure to include all the content.
Check the About dialog version and install whatever updates are required to get back to the correct version.
Once you have the correct version then make sure that DesignerPro isn't running and double click on the .reg files you saved earlier.
Run DesignerPro and check your bars.

If you get errors during start up or the bars are not correct then the best thing to do is to open the Window/Control Bars... dialog and hit the reset button and then set up your custom bars again.

This is pretty unlikely to work to preserve the bars (and options) if the version is different and will definitely not work when updating from one major version to another, e.g. from version 8 to version 9 when that arrives (even if you modify the process to restore the registry values into the correct place for v9, the bars layout will definitely change making the bars settings go very wrong).

Gerry

Thank you so much Gerry for such elaborate response! This was really helpful! Alright, I think I could pull this off, but I'm also considering to just wait for v9. That might be a better option.

You guys might as well include the layout saving option sometime too! That would be really helpful for some of us who like it custom :)

Thanks again!!