Fixing problems · Sopycat

Each problem below starts with the words Sopycat shows. If yours is not here, see Getting help at the end.

The recording bar says Microphone blocked

Windows is not letting Sopycat use the microphone. The screen is still being recorded, just without your voice.

Stop the recording, or carry on without narration.
Open Windows Settings › Privacy & security › Microphone (on Windows 10: Privacy › Microphone).
Turn on microphone access, and turn on Let desktop apps access your microphone.
Record again, or add the missing part with Record more steps….

No microphone or Microphone off means Sopycat could not find or start a microphone. Plug one in, check that it is switched on, and check that it is chosen in the Windows sound settings. See Record your voice.

No steps were found in this recording

The full message is No steps were found in this recording. Try recording again and pause a moment after each click. Sopycat could not find any clicks or typing to turn into steps. This happens with a very short recording, or when everything happened too quickly for a clear picture.

Record the task again, and pause for a moment after each click.
Click inside the program you are recording. Clicks on Sopycat's recording bar are never recorded.
If you only moved the mouse or scrolled, click something so Sopycat has a step to show.

If you add more steps to a manual and nothing is found, the message reads No steps were found in the new recording. Try again and pause a moment after each click. The manual itself is unchanged. See Record a task.

Recording window closed

The manual shows Something went wrong with the note Recording window closed. The recording bar was closed some other way than pressing Stop, so the recording ended early.

Press Try again to have Sopycat work through what was recorded.
If that does not give you a usable manual, press Delete and record the task again.
Next time, finish with Stop on the bar or the stop key (Ctrl+F9 unless you changed it).

Recording was interrupted before it finished

A card shows Needs attention, and the manual says Recording was interrupted before it finished. Sopycat or the PC closed while you were recording. Open the manual and press Try again. If nothing useful comes back, press Delete and record again.

Something went wrong, with Try again

A manual that could not be written shows a red dot in the sidebar and Needs attention on its card. Inside, it says Something went wrong with the reason underneath, and two buttons.

Try again writes the manual again from the same recording. The recording is kept, so nothing is lost by trying.
Delete moves it to Recently deleted, where you can restore it for 30 days.

If Windows shows a notification saying a manual could not be written, click it to open the manual. If Try again fails with the same reason, see Getting help.

Could not start, or Already recording

Could not start on the recording bar means Sopycat could not begin capturing the screen. Close Sopycat, open it again and press Record a task.

Already recording means a recording is running. Only one can run at a time. Look for the recording bar at the top or bottom of your screen, and press Stop.

This manual is still being written

You tried to record more steps, or add steps from a video, while Sopycat was still writing the manual. Wait until it is ready, usually a minute or two, then try again. You can work on something else in the meantime.

The steps came out as simple sentences

You chose smarter or online writing, but the steps read like Click Save. When the writer you chose cannot be reached, Sopycat finishes the manual with simple sentences instead, so a recording is never lost. While the manual is being written you may see one of these:

On-device model unavailable (…); wrote this manual from templates instead. The smarter-writing helper did not start.
Model unavailable (…); wrote this batch from templates. The writer stopped answering partway through.
Plan limit reached for this month. Your Sopycat account has used this month's steps.
License key rejected. Check Settings. The key for Sopycat account is wrong or has run out.

To fix it:

Open Settings › How the words get written and press Check (or Start and check for smarter writing). Fix what it reports.
Open the manual and choose ⋯ More options › Rewrite from the recording.

Rewrite from the recording replaces the words and pictures you changed by hand. Steps you added yourself are kept at the end, and the old version stays under Earlier versions.

If the smarter-writing helper says llama-server did not become ready in time, close other large programs and press Start and check again, or pick a smaller model such as Qwen2.5-VL 3B (smallest). See Choose how the words get written.

This needs LibreOffice

You see … needs LibreOffice to convert. Add the Office pack in Settings. or This conversion needs LibreOffice. Add the Office pack in Settings. In Make a PDF, a file's row says Needs the Office pack.

Sopycat uses LibreOffice, a free office program, to turn Excel, PowerPoint, older Word files (.doc), .rtf and .odt files into PDFs, and for some conversions. It is not in the installer. Pick one:

Press Download the Office pack (about 350 MB). It downloads once and needs no admin rights.
If LibreOffice is already installed, press Look again, or Choose soffice.exe… to point to it.

Settings › Converting Office files

Then add the file again. Word .docx files, pictures and PDFs do not need the Office pack. See Make a PDF, convert and batch jobs.

The PDF has a password

The editing tabs show This PDF has a password or This PDF is locked against changes. Whoever made the file protected it.

This PDF has a password: type the password and press Remove the password. The locked copy stays under Versions.
This PDF is locked against changes: it opens without a password, but editing is turned off. Type the permissions password and press Remove the lock.
That password does not open this PDF. The password is wrong. Check capital letters, or ask the person who sent the file.

Until the password is removed, the other tabs stay closed. Make a PDF and Batch jobs skip protected files: open the file in Sopycat and remove the password first. If you do not know the password, Sopycat cannot open the lock. See Pages and the More menu.

The words could not be removed from this file

The full message is The words could not be removed from this file. Nothing was saved. Try again after making the document searchable (OCR), or redact the page as a picture.

When you save a redaction, Sopycat takes the words and picture data out from under each box, then reads the page again to check. If anything is still there, it turns that page into a picture with the area painted black and checks again. If it still cannot prove the words are gone, it saves nothing, so you never get a file that only looks redacted. Your redaction boxes stay in place.

Choose More › Make it searchable (OCR)…, then save the redaction again.
If it still fails, turn the pages into pictures first: Sidebar › Tools › Convert files, PDF to pictures, then put the pictures back into one PDF with Make a PDF and redact that. The new file has no searchable words until you run OCR on it.

See Redact safely.

That file is open in Word

The full message is That file is open in Word. Close it there and save again. You tried to save a manual as a Word document over a file that Word has open. Windows will not let two programs write the same file.

Close the file in Word, then save again.
Or save under a different name.

Someone else is editing this

An amber banner says … is editing this. Changes you save may clash. with the person's name and computer. You share the library folder, and they have this document open for editing.

Press Open read-only to read it without changing it. A PDF opens read-only this way on its own.
Or wait. When they close it, the banner goes. If they closed Sopycat or their PC crashed, it clears by itself within 90 seconds.
Edit anyway lets you edit at the same time. Sopycat still stops either save from quietly replacing the other.

See Share a library with your office.

This was changed on another computer

A red banner says This was changed on another computer (by …). Reload theirs, or keep yours as a copy. Someone saved a newer version while you were working, so Sopycat refused your save rather than overwrite theirs. Nothing is lost: your changes stay marked Unsaved.

Reload theirs loads their version. Your unsaved changes are dropped.
Keep yours as a copy saves your version as a new document, with (your copy) after its title. In a manual or a Word file, your unsaved typing goes into the copy. In a PDF, the copy is the version you opened, so redo your unsaved PDF edits in it.

Two computers saved this at the same time

An amber banner says Two computers saved this at the same time, and the sync program kept both versions. OneDrive, Dropbox or Google Drive received two saves at once and kept both.

Press Compare and pick.
In Which version should stay?, look at who saved each one and when. Steps found in only one version are marked (only here).
Press Keep this version on the one you want, or Keep the current version. The others go into Earlier versions.

That copy is no longer there. means another computer already sorted it out. Close the document and open it again.

To make this rarer, keep the computers' clocks correct and give each PC its own name in Windows.

Couldn’t read the library folder

The Library says Couldn’t read the library folder: …. Check the folder in Settings. Sopycat cannot reach the folder your manuals are kept in. Usually OneDrive has not finished syncing, a network drive is disconnected, or the folder was moved or renamed.

Reconnect the drive or wait for OneDrive to sync, then open the Library again.
If the folder moved, point Sopycat at it: Settings › Where your manuals are kept › Change….

Change… only points Sopycat at a folder. It does not move your documents. See Where your files live.

A file could not be added

Already in your library: you added this exact file before, so Sopycat opens the copy you have.
Unsupported file type: Sopycat takes PDFs, Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, pictures, and text, Markdown and web page files. See Add documents to the library.
… is a folder. Add the files inside it instead.: open the folder and add the files.
Could not add …: that one file failed. The others were added.

There is no picture on the clipboard

You pasted a step, but what you copied is not a picture. Take a screenshot first with Windows+Shift+S, then press Ctrl+V in the manual.

Voice transcription is not set up yet

You chose Transcribe my narration before downloading voice transcription. Go to Settings › Voice transcription, pick a speech model and press its Download button, then try again.

If you see This manual has no recorded narration to write down, the manual was recorded without your voice. Turn on Record my voice while recording in Settings › Your voice, then record more steps.

The speech model that came down is not a whisper model (a network filter may have replaced it). means your network changed the download. Try again on another connection, such as home internet instead of the office network. See Record your voice.

You see Sharing as a web page is off while regulated-office mode is on. Your office turned on regulated-office mode, which hides that option. Save the manual as a PDF or Word document instead. See Save and share a manual.

Could not check for updates

Settings › Updates says Could not check: …. The PC is offline, or the release page could not be reached. Nothing is wrong with Sopycat. Press Check now later. See Install, update and uninstall.

A backup will not restore or save

That file is not a Sopycat backup (it could not be opened as a zip). or That zip is not a Sopycat backup: it has no manifest.json. Pick the .zip file that Sopycat made.
If the library is bigger than 4 GB even without the recordings' videos, one backup file cannot hold it. Copy the library folder itself in File Explorer instead.

See Backups and Recently deleted.

Windows warns about the installer

The first time you run the installer, Windows may show Windows protected your PC. This is Microsoft SmartScreen, which warns about programs it has not seen often.

Check the file came from our download page.
Click More info, then Run anyway.

On some Windows 11 PCs, Smart App Control blocks the installer outright and gives no way past it. If that happens, write to support@sopycat.com. See Install, update and uninstall.

Getting help

If something still is not working, send us the details. Sopycat can gather them for you.

Save a report… saves a text file with the Sopycat and Windows versions, your settings with keys hidden, and the last part of the log. Email it to support@sopycat.com with what you were doing.
Or type what happened in the box and press Send. If that says it could not reach the service, save a report and email it instead.
Open the log folder shows the log files, if we ask for them.

Settings › If something goes wrong

What these reports contain is on What stays on your PC. Many questions are also answered in Questions people ask.