TiddlyWiki Recovery

TiddlyWiki is a extremely handy way to store notes locally.  As a one file wiki, with no install process -- you just run it -- it is as low overhead as you get.  Gone are the days when I run a local web server, so that I can run Trac, MoinMoin or whatever.  But like all software projects, it has it's downsides.

One downside is that occasionally the manual saving simply fails.  You get a dialog box with some unhelpful text simply stating "It is not possible to save changes.."  If you search for this text, all results suggest that you have removed the drive which you are saving to.  But this is not necessarily the case, I save to my internal laptop hard drive and this occasionally happens to me regardless.

What to do?

If you search further, there are references with links to a recovery process.  You'll notice that text is in the Wayback Machine.  It's links are dead.  But if you search for "FAQ_RescueStoreArea" there is perhaps one existing TiddyWiki instance which still contains the content you need.  It contains the following link:

Link to copy.

1. Right click on the above link and copy it.  In Chrome this is the "Copy link address" menu item.
2. Switch to the browser tab where your unsaveable TiddlyWiki is located.
3. Paste the copied link into the address bar.
4. Hit enter! Observe the new window with your raw wiki contents.
5. Edit a local copy of your wiki ".html" file.
6. Paste the raw wiki contents within the div HTML tag with the "storeArea" id.  You can get further detail on this from the "one existing" link above.
7. Save your modified HTML file.
8. Open it and verify that it contains your most recent changes.
9. Close the old unsaveable TiddlyWiki instance tab and pretend this horrible affair never occurred, that the TiddlyWiki powers that be document a clear recovery process and forget about your wasted time.

To be clear about where to insert the recovered raw wiki contents, here is the quoted text from the "one existing" link:

<!--POST-SHADOWAREA-->
<div id="storeArea">
.... *** replace this part *** ...
</div>
<!--POST-STOREAREA-->

In theory, I would hope you could copy the tiddler into your own wiki so it is available for future use.  But it appears to be plugin-based, so this will not work and the raw pre-generated javascript link needs to be used instead.


Good luck!