Hi Robert,

I think you're missing a point in how the templates are treated. Most, if not all of this is covered in the Animated Tutorial, so if the tutorial needs more explanations please let me know and I will expand it to be more detailed.

The main Menus at the top of the program which in the default are "Interior, Exterior, Utilities, etc" have absolutely no impact on the report. They are only for your organization. You can throw everything under one Menu or under 10, the report will look the same.

What's IS important are the items under each menu. Each item under a menu (i.e. Bathrooms, Bedrooms, Kitchen) becomes it's own page in the report, we'll call these a section of the report. Since each section of the report starts it's own page, the title you use is shown at the top of the page on the report.

Within each section of the report (i.e. Kitchen) you have a bunch of tabs going across the screen such as: Ceiling, Walls, Sink, Floor, Stove, etc. The tabs at the top also have NO impact on the report. They are purely for your organization, they are a short notation about what is within the tab itself. You don't have to have long descriptions as a tab as they would fill up the entire screen.

On each tab you have panels. There are two types of panels. Damage Panels (which include the red/black area) which are used for observations and Selection Panels which are used for material types, model numbers, insulation thickness, etc. The title of the Damage Panel is what appears on the report as an item within a 'section'. If there is a selection panel on the same tab as a Damage Panel then it is listed WITH the Damage Panel as it's materials, model numbers or whatever you enter in the description box. Because the Damage Panel title is what prints on the report, it must be unique within each section of the report. You cannot have two Damage Panels in the Kitchen called Sink. If you did they would contain the identical information as the program stores all data as the name of the Section+Name of Panel (i.e. Kitchen+Sink).

Hopefully that makes sense. I think you are looking at the tab name and thinking that shows on the report, it's not. What you CAN change and make Observations or whatever in every section is the Description Text for each section. That appears when you click Edit Comments on the left side.

I haven't seen other people with an issue where the templates don't store on a Mac, and have not been able to replicate this myself. Please do a quick test. Open up the default template. Add a couple of comments to a section, click on Save Template and save it as some new name like "Roberts Template". Then close the program, reopen it, click Open Template and open up "Roberts Template" and see if your items are there.

Also, are you saving your inspections? Every inspection has an embedded copy of the template within it. If you open an inspection from last week you can simply click Save Template and give it a new name and you now have a copy of your template from last week.

Please try the test above and let me know how it goes!

Dominic

Dominic, I seem to found what has happened to me with saving templates.  I have been making a custom template with the template editor and then clicking the save button within that editor.  Every time I did that, I would be fine until I closed out of the entire program and then re-opened to find that my custom template did not save.  So, I went to the tutorial and read it over.  The tutorial says that I need to do file>save template as in order to save the template.  I then did this and my template saved  and showed up after I closed the program and re-opened.  So, I do not know what the save button accomplishes in the template editor, but it does not actual permanently save the template.  It seems to only save the template additions and changes as l work, but not permanently if I exit the program.  Also, my check box for making the custom template open as the default template does not seem to work.  It does not matter if I follow the tutorial or instructions, the template will not open in default.  The balnk template seems to be the only one that will open on default no matter what.

My MAC OS is 10.4.11 and my Inspection program is 2.5.8

Thanks Dominic for all u do.  These growing pains are tough, but well worth it.