Resolving auto-backup problems

Neck Diagrams includes an auto-backup feature*, which periodically creates zip-archives of the Neck Diagrams .fbd documents stored in your Data Folders. The v2.3 release includes changes that make auto-backup issues less intrusive and easier to investigate and resolve.

* you can find out more about the auto-backup feature via the application – go to menu Help > Help Contents and in the left-hand pane navigate to Neck Diagrams > Reference > Automatic Backups.

If there’s a problem encountered when performing the backup, a notification is briefly shown in the bottom right corner of the application window, like this:

A backup problem notification popup.

Clicking on the notification will open the Automatic Backup page in the Preferences. This shows the status of the last backup, and details of any problems encountered:

The Automatic Backup Preference page, showing details of where the backups are stored (which can be changed) and also the status of the last backup, with details of any issues encountered.

If the backup didn’t complete successfully, the table in the status section will contain contain one row for each issue encountered during the backup. To make the backups work again these issues need to be resolved. They are usually fairly simple to fix!

The first thing to check is to make sure that the Data Folders configuration is OK. The backup operation goes through all data folders listed in the Data Folders page in the Preferences, and will try to create a copy of the contents of each in the backup zip-archive. If there is a problem with a Data Folder, then it’ll be shown in more detail in the Data Folders page in the Preferences, like this:

The red tag against the folder called ‘Some folder‘ indicates there’s a problem and hovering the mouse over it shows a tooltip message with more info.

The Data Folders list should be tidied up to ensure only folders that exist, that can be read and written to, are listed here.

Are you on a Mac?

If you’re on Catalina (or newer), then you should also make sure to grant permissions for Neck Diagrams to access any data folders that are in ‘special’ locations. These are the Documents folder, Downloads folder and/or the Desktop folder. You can find out more detail about how to do this in this article:

Next Steps

Missing data folders, or not having granted access, is the cause of most auto-backup problems so once this is resolved you should hopefully not get anymore backup error messages!

You can do a test by clicking the “Backup Now” button on the Automatic Backup Preferences page. If the backup still isn’t successful then be sure to read the messages in the Status section and take action accordingly.

If you’d like help resolving issues the please do contact us via the Help page.