Remembary and Passwords

Diaries are very personal things, and they often contain private information. That's why Remembary has an option to set a password that has to be entered before seeing the diary contents.

A number of people have contacted me saying that they have forgotten their password and asking how to recover it. In designing Remembary, I erred on the side of security - so Remembary doesn't have a way to retrieve a password. If you've forgotten your password, you won't be able to access your diary anymore. On the other hand, this means that nobody else who doesn't know your password will be able to access your diary.

A few things to keep in mind though:

- It's a good idea to export your diary every so often, and ideally keep this backup separate from your computer and your iPad. It's good to have a backup available in case or a robbery or a fire or some other disaster - or if you've forgetten your password! The new versions of Remembary allow exports to be sent via email or synced to DropBox.

- Remembary doesn't have any limit on the number of times you can guess the password - so before doing anything else, it's worth trying to guess your old password again. Try different kinds of capitalization or misspellings, or add extra spaces at the beginning or end, in case you made a mistake setting your password the first time.

- If you just can't recall your password, you can 'reset' Remembary so you start again with a new diary. Then you can copy-and-paste entries from a backup if you have any. Here's how to do it:

1. Plug your iPad into your computer. iTunes will come up. Click on your iPad's icon in the directory on the left, and then click on "Apps" at the top of the screen. 
2. The first thing to do is look at the "File Sharing" section at the bottom of the screen. If you did any exports of your diary back before you forgot your password, you can get them from here. Click on "Remembary" and drag the export files out to your computer. 
3. In the top part of the "Apps" panel is a miniature version of your iPad's home screen, with all of your apps and groups. To the left of that is a list of all of your apps, with checkboxes next to each one. Find the checkbox in the left-side list for Remembary.
4. Click on the checkbox for Remembary so it's OFF. Then click on the "Apply" button in the bottom right of your iTunes window. You will get a message asking 'Are you sure you want to remove the app "Remembary" from the iPad?' Click on "Remove". Your iPad will sync and Remembary (and its data) will be removed from the iPad.
5. Once the sync is finished, go back to the list of apps and click on the checkbox for Remembary again so that it's "ON". Click on "Apply" in the bottom right again. Your iPad will sync with a new blank copy of Remembary.
6. Once your iPad has finished syncing, find the Remembary icon and tap on it to start again. You should see the book cover appear without the password field, and then today's entry should show up with the introductory instruction text ("Today I started using Remembary...")
7. Now that you have a new empty version of Remembary, you can re-enter any diary entries that you might have exported previously and that you saved on your computer back in step 2. The easiest way to get them back into your iPad is to send them to yourself in an email, or sync them into Pages or another text editing program. Then you can copy-and-paste them back into the appropriate dates in Remembary.