how to upgrade textpad but retain settings

kevinHealy · Post by **kevinHealy** » Fri Aug 08, 2008 4:00 am

I see that TextPad 5.2 has come out, and I am on 5.1, so I am plan on upgrading to the latest and hopefully less buggy version. In particular, no help topics appear for me with 5.1, so I am hoping that an ugrade will fix this.

But how can I upgrade TextPad and not lose all of my settings and preferences that I labored so carefully to specify?

I do NOT like having multiple versions of programs on my system, so in the past, I have always deinstalled the current version before installing the new. Unfortunately, that always seems to eliminate my settings.

TextPad seems to lack a menu command to update itself; if it had said feature, this would not be an issue.

How do you guys do this?

gan · Post by **gan** » Fri Aug 08, 2008 7:36 pm

When i went from 4.x to 5.x i did a uninstall and then installed version 5.x, but from a 5.x version to another 5.x version i just did a upgrade and didn't lose my settings or had any other issues except the bugs in earlier 5.x version. I don't think a upgrade from 5.1 to 5.2 should cause any problems. Most of the upgrade problems i read about in this forum is 4.x->5.x.

kevinHealy · Post by **kevinHealy** » Sat Aug 09, 2008 4:24 pm

gan wrote:When i went from 4.x to 5.x i did a uninstall and then installed version 5.x, but from a 5.x version to another 5.x version i just did a upgrade and didn't lose my settings or had any other issues except the bugs in earlier 5.x version. I don't think a upgrade from 5.1 to 5.2 should cause any problems. Most of the upgrade problems i read about in this forum is 4.x->5.x.

I do not know what you mean when you distinguish uninstall from upgrade; there is no upgrade menu choice in TextPad, is there?

What I found just now is that when I uninstalled TP 5.1, and then installed TP 5.2, then the uninstall process must not have wiped out any of my preferences from the registry because they were all still there when I installed TP 5.2.

While that is convenient for me, it is not good practice on the part of TP: an uninstall should totally clean up after itself.

But TP should also have an update menu choice which updates in place and preserves preferences. Extra points if, like FireFox, the update menu choice automatically searches TP's website for the latest version and lets you know if you need to update or not.

gan · Post by **gan** » Sat Aug 09, 2008 10:37 pm

kevinHealy wrote:I do not know what you mean when you distinguish uninstall from upgrade; there is no upgrade menu choice in TextPad, is there?

What I found just now is that when I uninstalled TP 5.1, and then installed TP 5.2, then the uninstall process must not have wiped out any of my preferences from the registry because they were all still there when I installed TP 5.2.

While that is convenient for me, it is not good practice on the part of TP: an uninstall should totally clean up after itself.

But TP should also have an update menu choice which updates in place and preserves preferences. Extra points if, like FireFox, the update menu choice automatically searches TP's website for the latest version and lets you know if you need to update or not.

What i mean by a upgrade is to install a new version of textpad into the same folder as the previous version (no uninstall). Such a upgrade from version 4.x to 5.x doesn't always work very well, but from one 5.x version to a new 5.x it should work just fine. That's how it works for most applications even if some also have a menu option to check for new versions and stuff like that which textpad does not have.
There is no upgrade menu option or something like, but just install on top of the previous version and it's upgraded....it's easy and simple. If you are looking for a upgrade button you won't find it, but that doesn't mean it cannot be upgraded.