I have just completed a total reinstall of my Windows 10 Pro and Dragon 15.61. Needless to say I have definitely installed everything in the default directories. But I have a couple concerns before I go further.

 

 

1. Within profile there is a Save option and they have no idea what is going to save or where.
2. Manage User Profile-Advanced-Export, which I did. It did the Export to User\ameri\Bob.
3. Which one holds the files to import and what will do the actual Import.

 

Once I have this accomplished this I need to know the following, I saved all my old files:

1. What is the name of the files that hold my Commands and my Custom Vocabulary
   1. There must be a way to recover this.

 

 If they are in a *.dat file I should be able to view them in NotePad ++.

 

Bob

-------------------------

Robert Snow
Germantown, WI

To cut a long story short, the vocabulary, including your custom words, is not within a single file, but spread over multiple places within the user files, so there is no chance to grab them via the Explorer and move them around. Your commands are in a file named MyCmds.dat, but there is no way to view the file other than in a Hex editor.

Aside from this, I would STRONGLY suggest that you stop messing with the files in Explorer, as quite clearly, you don't know what you are doing, so chances are very high that you are going to screw it up this way. You can safely use Dragon exclusively through the Dragon menus, and leave the whole business of maintaining the files to Dragon.

Going "old school" isn't always as easy as it may seem, and can do more damage than good.

-------------------------

No need to buy if all you want to do is try ...

DragonCapture KB Download (Latest)
DragonCapture Homepage

I hope you recover the information. But if you don't, here are thoughts about how to avoid this situation in the future.

I use a manual method to backup Dragon. I don't do it often: maybe three or four times a year. I have lots of custom words and commands, but don't make a lot of changes to them. If you are someone who regularly adds or subtracts large number of words and commands, my method may not be appropriate.

I back up three files:

1. Custom words and phrases, which I save as a .txt file.
2. Custom commands, which I save as a .xml file.
3. (optional) A plain text file that contains a sample of my writing.

I keep these files in a folder. I know exactly where the folder is so I don't have to spend time hunting for it.

When I need to rebuild my profile, I do the following:

1. Create a new profile.
2. Import my custom words.
3. Import my custom commands.
4. Allow Dragon to analyze my writing sample.
5. Review Dragon's settings (Tools > Options) and make the changes I want. (About 25 in all.)
6. Exit Dragon and restart it.

As part of this process, I change the Properties of "new line" -- but not everybody will want to do that.

The process takes about five minutes. It may take some people a little longer, but less time than it takes to write a detailed message to this forum!

The new profile is accurate. If the accuracy improves afterwards -- and I'm not convinced it does -- the gains are small and happen quickly.

Alan's sage advice is very effective and only requires minimal space but if you want to keep it very simple, consider copying your entire %LOCALAPPDATA%\Nuance\NS15\Users\ [your username] folder. We make it even simpler by creating a shortcut to the %LOCALAPPDATA%\Nuance\NS15\Users\ folder on our desktop and then adding another shortcut to the drive you wish to backup your user profile to. We schedule a once a month reminder to double-click on our user folder shortcut and drag & drop our user folder onto the 2nd shortcut; preferably an external hard drive, flash or the cloud.

 

Of course if you don't trust yourself to remember (we never remember) and want to make it really simple, add your user profile to your backup utility. You do have a backup utility right? Keep in mind that backup utilities do not know where your Dragon user folder is by default so you will have to add your user folder to the backup list. We like Acronis True Image but there are lots of excellent backup utilities.

-------------------------

Change "No" to "Know" w/KnowBrainer 2020
Trial Downloads
Dragon/Sales@KnowBrainer.com 
(615) 884-4558 ex 1

 

If you export vocabulary as an XML file instead of TXT then you will not need to change Properties of words like "new line".

 

The customized formatting will be preserved in your vocab XML file.

-------------------------

Dragon Professional Individual v15.6. Windows 10. Knowbrainer 2017.

 

No, it will not. Although the XML file contains properties in addition to the TXT file, it only covers custom words, not "factory" words.

-------------------------

No need to buy if all you want to do is try ...

DragonCapture KB Download (Latest)
DragonCapture Homepage