How to Back-up your Manuscript Easily and for Free

/ harmonykentonline

Hello SErs. Harmony here. It always saddens me beyond measure when I read that a fellow author has lost all their hard work due to a computer failure, lost laptop, or any number of other reasons. While I have an Airport Capsule attached to my Apple Mac, I also ensure that I back-up my work another way too. Just in case. After all, the Capsule is hardware that will one day fail.

So, how do I give myself an easy and free back-up of my manuscript?

I email a copy to myself. Any basic Word file isn’t going to take up that much room on your server and will send quickly. If, like me, you use Scrivener, you will find that far too bulky a file to try and email. My work-around is to compile to a Word doc and then email that to myself. I let the email sit there in my inbox, or you can make a designated folder especially to hold your back-ups. That’s probably the best option, as that lessens the risk of you hitting the delete button by accident.

While the compile to Word often results in a lot of formatting issues–and I mean a lot!–I’d much sooner have to sort all that out than to have lost all of my words. So please, please ensure that you have a fail-safe back-up system in place on whatever device you use to write your books. If I never see another author who’s lost everything due to one failure or another, I’ll be a happy gal.

I hope you find this post useful and would love to hear any tips and tricks you might have on this topic. Leave me a note in the comments below.

39 thoughts on “How to Back-up your Manuscript Easily and for Free”

  2. Back-ups are so important! I would freak if I lost a manuscript.

    I back up to two different Macs, an external USB, and Dropbox. I’m of the opinion you can never have too many backups!
    Great reminder post, Harmony!

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  4. The e-mail solution is perfect, Harmony. Since I use my MAC to create and PC to publish I actually have the MS in four locations (Two hard drives and two mailboxes). Thanks. Oh yeah, I also have it on an external hard drive. This is one reason I don’t use Scrivner.

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  10. Pingback: How to Back-up your Manuscript Easily and for Free — Story Empire | When Angels Fly

  12. I back up everything to Dropbox. With it, I have the added benefit of being able to access my files from both my desktop and laptop. A few years ago, I used an external hard drive (the laptop I had at the time was old and had a small hard drive). I still have the hard drive but no longer use it. Recently, I was able to find a couple of files from years ago on it that I thought I’d lost!

    It’s so sad when writers lose their work.

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  16. After losing the best part of a MSC a few years back, I have become paranoid and save all the good stuff on several USB’S, Dropbox and One Drive, all of which are free! Once bitten and all that, but I won’t be caught out like that again…

    Liked by 1 person

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