Synchronizing LifeJournal between Two Computers

Many of our customers have more than one computer--a laptop and a desktop, or a work and home computer. We've always had a lenient license policy where you can install LifeJournal on any computer that you own, for example, desktop and laptop. (If you want to install LifeJournal on another computer that you don't own--such as at work--then our license policy requires you to purchase another license.)

With LifeJournal you can run the program on two computers and synchronize the entries. The easiest way to accomplish the synchronization is to keep your data on a removable, rewritable media such as a USB flash drive (also known as a memory stick, key chain drive, or thumb drive).  Alternatively, you can use an external drive, or a server that you can reach from both computers.

Here are the steps to synchronize two computers:

Assume that you have LJ2 (for the rest of this article, this applies to any of the specialized editions such as LifeJournal for Writers, Christian LifeJournal, etc.) installed and running on one computer (Computer A) and you now want to install LJ2 on a second computer (Computer B).

1. Insert a USB flash drive into the USB port of Computer A. Then open your LifeJournal program and go to the File menu>Backup Journal Data. Click the "Browse" button and a dialog box will open which will allow you to navigate to your USB flash drive. When you have selected your USB flash drive, click the "OK" button.

2. Insert the USB flash drive into Computer B.

3. Install LifeJournal into Computer B from your CD or from our download and save the demo installation file from the appropriate website. (If it's LJ2 that you want to download, go to www.lifejournal.com/download .  If it's LJ for Writers you want to download go to writers.lifejournal.com/download and so on for the other specialized editions.) When completely download, double click the installation file and the installation will begin.

4. When you first run the program, you will have three choices when initially logging in: New Writer, Open Existing Writer, and Restore Writer. Choose Restore. An Open dialog box will appear, through which you can navigate to the removable media that has your journal files. Click on the files that have the format [YourName].ljd. The journal writer's name will appear in the log-in screen and you can open the program with full access to all your journal entries. Enter your key and use the same password as before.

5. When you are finished using with the program, back up your entries by going to File menu>Backup Journal Data. Insert your USB flash drive and back up to it.

6. When you return to Computer A (or Computer B), insert the removable media and open LifeJournal. Go to the File menu>Merge Entries from Backup. A dialog will appear where you can navigate to the [YourName].ljd file in your USB Flash drive. Click the "OK" button and all of your journal entries from Computer B will merge with the entries that you have with Computer A. 

7. Follow the instructions for steps 5 and 6 each time you are finished with writing entries in one computer (step 5) and when you are starting writing in the other computer (step 6).