Support for My Writing Spot on Android™

This is the official support page for the My Writing Spot companion application that is available for Android. You will find answers to frequently asked questions about the app here.

If you still have questions, or are running into a problem, please send an email to mywritingspot@gmail.com and we'll do our best to get you up and writing quickly.

How do I sync between the web app and the Android app?

Here are the steps that you can follow to get the synchronization between the web app and Android set up:

1. Log into the web app at http://www.mywritingspot.com. If this is the first time you're logging in, there will be a single document in your list, named '[new]'. Click on this document and add some text.

2. Save the document. You should be prompted to give the document a name at this point.

3. Once you've saved the document with a new name, close the web app. In general, it is not a good idea to have the web app open when you are trying to sync from Android.

4. Launch the Android app. Hit the Menu key and then tap on the Settings button

5. On the Account Settings screen, enter your account information for the same account that you used to log into the web app. If you are using an email account with a non-google domain, you'll need to enter the entire email address into the Login field. Enter your password into the Password field, being careful not to mistype it. Android helps a bit here, showing you each character for a second before hiding it.

6. Once your account settings are OK, tap on the Done button.

7. On the My Documents screen, hit the Menu key and then tap on sync. A busy "spinner" should appear for a few seconds while the app is synching. When the sync is complete, you should see the document from the web app in your document list on the phone.

Now that you're set up, you can tap the sync button any time to sync the documents between the web and Android. When you are logged into the web app, you'll also be able to email documents to yourself as a backup, or download them directly to the hard disk. The files are saved as simple text file, so you'll be able to open them in any word processor and go from there.

My document used to sync, but it doesn't sync anymore. What gives?

It's possible that if there are changes to both copies of a document (the one on Android and the one on the web), the app will be unable to sync it, because it's not sure which version of the document you want to keep.

If this happens, you can do the following:

Figure out which copy of the document you wish to keep, either the one on Android or the one on the web. Then delete the other copy. So, if you want to keep the copy that's on the web, delete the one on the phone. If you want to keep the one on the phone, then delete the copy on the web. Then perform a sync from the Android app, and the good copy will be synched to both places.

Just to be extra careful, you might want to use the Email Document feature to email yourself a backup copy before you do this. (In the document editor, hit the menu key and tap on Email Document.)

To prevent this from happening in the future, try to maintain only one modified version of each document. If you've made changes to a document on the phone, then try not to make any changes to the copy on the web app until you've performed a sync. Since the web app saves the current document automatically every few minutes, it's best to keep it closed when working on the phone.

The following workflow is suggested to avoid such conflicts:
1. When you launch the app, perform a sync. This will ensure that you have the most recent documents on your device.
2. Write write write!
3. When your writing session is over, perform a sync. This will send your updates back to the web.

How do I rename a document or change its document group?

On the My Documents screen, tap and hold the document that you want to rename. This will bring up a menu. Tap on the Document Properties button. This will bring up the Document Properties screen, which will allow you to rename the document or change its document group. Tap the Done button when you are finished.

The next time that you sync the document, the name change will be reflected in the web app.

How do I delete a document? It keeps coming back from the dead every time I sync. It's kinda creeping me out...

Due to the way that the data is synchronized between Android and the web, to truly delete a document you need to delete it from both the Android app and the web app. If you only remove the document from one app, then it will "come back from the dead" after the next sync, because the app will have grabbed the copy from the companion application.

NOTE: The next release of the app will have delete synchronization, so your documents will no longer be zombies. You'll finally be able to put that club away.

When are you going to add feature X?

If you've got a feature request, let us know at mywritingspot@gmail.com. If it's a good idea, we'll consider adding it to a future release of the app.

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