When opening an old report, you may get this message:
"The template that was used to create this report (...) has been modified since the report was created. You will NOT be able to modify the template while viewing this report."
Why does this happen?
When you save a report, the template is merged into the report so that the template as it was that day stays the same, in other words no changes you make to the standalone template will affect that finished report.
The reason the software prevents you from editing the template of an older report is to prevent your current templates from being overwritten. For example: You fine-tune your template exactly how you want it. You then write a report using your template. Over the next month, you make further changes to your template. You end up needing to open the report you wrote a month ago, and try to make edits to the template. If the software allowed this, the entire month that you've spent improving your template would be overwritten with this older report's version of the template.
Solution
You can absolutely still edit the template that was used to create this report. To do so, you'll need to by save a copy of the template and give it a new, unique name.
- Open the report that contains an older version of a template that you want to edit.
- Click File Save Template As.
- Give it a new name (if you use the name of an existing template, it will overwrite it. Just add a date to the name, e.g. John's Template 09-08-2017)
- You'll see that you are now able to fully edit the template without running the risk of overwriting your current templates. Any changes you make will impact only the new template you've just named.
Further learning: What are report templates and how do they relate to reports?
- Template files (*ht5, *.ht4 or *.ht3) are used to start a report. They contain all of the sections, inspection items, auto comments, styles and materials that will be included in a report. You can have many different templates for different kinds of reports like residential, commercial, EIFS, mold and so on. They can be seen as the framework of your report. They are standalone files.
- Report files (*hr5, *.hr4 or *.hr3) contain the template that was used to start the report and all of the answers and comments about that inspection. It is important to note that the report contains an internal copy of the template that was used to start the home inspection so that future changes to the template will not have any effect on this report. So when you open an old report it has all of the sections, questions, and auto comments from the template that were there when you started that report. This preserves the template to its exact condition when the report was written, so that you do not mistakenly affect already finished reports when editing the template you used to create them.
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.