Troubleshooting

Most things that look broken in YourBook are the app waiting on something: a connection, a transcript, or a bit more of your story. Find the message you're seeing below. Each fix is short, and none of them puts your story at risk.

If your problem isn't here, email support@yourbook.ai and a person will help.

A recording is stuck at "Pending Upload"

Your recording finished while there was no connection. It's saved safely on your device, and it will upload on its own as soon as you're back online.

If you're online and it still hasn't moved:

1. Open the recording from the Material tab.
2. Tap Upload on its detail page to force a retry.

Nothing is lost while a recording is pending. See Recording audio for how recordings move from your device into your story.

Transcription shows "Failed"

1. Open the recording from the Material tab.
2. Tap Retry Transcription.

Conversations take longer than solo recordings because each speaker is being identified and labelled, so give a Record Conversation file a little more time before retrying.

An upload is stuck on "reading it now…"

Large PDFs and batches of photos take a few minutes to read. Handwritten letters and multi-page PDFs are read page by page, so they're the slowest.

If the card flips to "failed":

1. Check the file opens normally outside YourBook. A file that won't open on your device won't open for us either.
2. Upload it again from Material → Upload files.

See Adding letters, photos and documents for what happens to a file after you upload it.

"Your book is still taking shape" on the Book tab

This isn't a fault. It means there isn't enough gathered story yet to plan chapters from.

Keep talking to your interviewer in the Story tab, or add letters, photos and recordings in Material. Once enough moments have been gathered, the Book tab changes to "Ready to shape your book" and offers Plan chapters.

A chapter says "New material · regenerate"

New answers or uploads belong in that chapter's part of the story. The chapter hasn't changed by itself. It's waiting for you to decide.

Tap Rewrite on the chapter card to weave the new material in. Any passages you've locked are kept exactly as they are.

Chapter generation seems stuck

Writing a chapter runs through seven steps, and a long chapter can take a while. If nothing moves for more than ten minutes, the progress panel flags a stall and offers three buttons:

• Resume from picks up at the step that stopped.
• Retry from runs that step again.
• Restart generation starts the chapter from the beginning.

Try them in that order.

"Limited source material" in the editor

The chapter is being written from very little. The fix is always the same:

1. Go back to Story or Material and gather more about that part of your life.
2. Return to the chapter and tap Rewrite.

Two entries for the same person

Names get heard two ways ("Peggy" and "Margaret", say), and the app keeps both until you confirm they're one person.

1. Open Story so far from the Story tab.
2. Tap Check for tidy-ups. The app usually proposes the merge as a "The same person?" card. Choose Yes, combine them and pick which record keeps the name.
3. If no card appears, tap one of the two entries, correct it, then open the other and choose Remove from the story.

Corrections here flow into every chapter written afterwards. See Reviewing what we've gathered.

The book has the wrong name or point of view

Both live in Book Settings:

• Book Details for the title and description.
• Writing Style for Point of View (first or third person) and Subject Name (who the book is about).

Change them, then Rewrite the chapters you want updated. Chapters written after the change use the corrected values. See Account and book settings.

"Unlock Exports" when exporting

Exporting is available once your book has been purchased, and your account doesn't have an active purchase right now.

Go to Account → Billing and tap Get Your Book — $99, or redeem a gift code with Redeem Gift Code. Everything you've gathered and written is waiting for you either way. See Trial, purchase and access.

My purchase isn't showing after a reinstall

1. Make sure you're signed in with the same YourBook account you bought with, and on mobile, the same App Store or Google Play account.
2. Go to Account → Billing and tap Restore Purchases.

"Your access has ended"

Your free trial or your year of writing access has finished. Your story and your book are safe. Nothing has been deleted.

From that screen, tap Get Your Book – $99 or Redeem a Gift Code. Either one takes you straight back to where you left off.

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Anything not covered here: support@yourbook.ai. You can also reach us in the app from Account → Help & Support.