Paratext includes the complete history of the project, including which team member edited the text and when. Some simple operations like copying the project to a new project in order to change the project’s short name will cause all the history of the project to be lost. The Convert Project tool was added to Paratext to allow changing the project short name, normalizing Unicode characters, and changing the name(s) of project users, while preserving the project history.
Where do I find the Convert Project tool?
- Paratext 9: Go to the Project menu > Advanced > Convert Project.
- Paratext 8: Go to the Tools menu > Advanced > Convert Project.
Prepare for a major change
Everyone on the project must do a send/receive on the project and all related back translation or auxiliary projects. Then they must stop working on the data. Once all members have done this, the project administrator must do a send/receive of the same projects. Now the administrator has the master copies and is ready to proceed.
Converting a Project
You must be a project administrator to use the tool. Make sure the project you want to convert is selected before you open the tool.
When you open the tool, the dialog looks like this:
You must enter a new project short name. The tool will leave the old project unchanged, but will create a new project taking the old project data and applying the changes you specify.
Remove deleted files from project history
Check this box if you want to clean up the history from files (such as large illustrations) that are not part of the project any more.
Clean up Paratext Live history
If you have used Paratext live and you want to change user names in the project history, check this box.
Convert encoding to 65001 – Unicode
If your project uses a non-Unicode encoding, you can check this box to convert the encoding to Unicode. This box cannot be checked if the project is already in Unicode.
Normalization
You can have the tool normalize your text as either Composed (letters and diacritics are one code point) or Decomposed (letters and diacritics are two code points). We highly recommend setting normalization to Composed, as this is the best practice for software integration.
Replace User names
To change a user name listed in the project history, select the existing user name you want to remove from the list in the box on the left, then type the new name you want to replace it with in the box on the right, then click “Add.” This will set this pair of names to be replaced. You can add more names to be replaced if you need to. If you click “Add” then realize you made a mistake in your pair of names, click the “Remove” button to remove that pair of names.
Example: this will create a new project PTP2, cleaning up the Paratext live history, and replacing the user name “Jeff Shrum” with “Isabela Novidades”
When you click the Convert project button, the tool goes to work applying your changes. It has to work on each change in your project history, so it can take many hours if the project history has lots of changes.
Last steps
Register the Converted Project
When the tool finishes, the new project will not be registered. If it is a standard translation, daughter translation, or study bible additions project, you need to register it. See the Register a New Project section on this page.
Delete the Old Project
You should also delete the old project and its registration from the registry as follows:
- If you are concerned that the conversion may have created issues, make a backup of the old project before you delete it: Project menu > Advanced > Backup Project to File
- Go to the Project menu > Delete Project…
- In the first drop-down, make sure the old project is selected.
- In the second drop-down, select “Delete project for all users; delete registration”:
- Click OK.
- Accept the warnings.
The old project is now unregistered and deleted, and the converted project has replaced it.
