# need help!



## Arrowsite (Jul 7, 2016)

im trying to repost my story in .txt format so it will all show up on the screen instead of having people download it, but it wont show. Im using open office. Can someone help plz? and when i try to put it back to .doc as i had it before, you cant even download the file. What can i do?


----------



## WoodworkerDan (Jul 30, 2016)

I could be stating the obvious or already tried - but good troubleshooting starts at the basics, and works onward - when you save your file into .TXT, do you double check the formatting code matches FA's recommend format? I haven't used Open Office in a while, but Word makes a point of confirming the format that the text data is saved in since there's at least 100 standard decoding and character set formats it has libraries for.

More simply, can you open your .TXT file in a program like notepad before uploading to FA? There may be a chance O.O. is simply saving the file in its native (original) code and replacing the file extension with TXT - which means that there would be loads of bogus formatting data when loading the file with any other software. (In other words, the 2-4 letters after DOT aren't set in stone - they're just shorthand for a program to apply a set of assumptions when reading, and can be changed without changing the contents of the file)


----------



## quoting_mungo (Jul 31, 2016)

Unfortunately there's a bug with file names/extensions on text submissions - my recommendation is to NEVER replace the submission file on a text submission with a file with a different file name if you can at all help it, as that seems to be what (sometimes - I don't think it's guaranteed to) triggers the bug.

Basically, if the download link of your submission points to a nonsense location, the submission's database entry has become corrupt, and there's no current fix for the issue once it's happened short of "delete and resubmit your submission".

I'd personally recommend Notepad++ for saving .txt files for story submissions. It's a pretty lightweight download, and can be run off a USB stick if you can't or don't want to install it to your hard drive.


----------



## Arrowsite (Jul 31, 2016)

i solved the issue. It's all working now. Thank you! Solved it by replacing the chapters with .txt files and formatting in the bold and italic. However the first chapter, and the chapter i was trying to submit refused to work right so i had to do those a bit differently. The first chapter is in the description while hte other i had to delete and replace.


----------

