A 'Sample Narratives' library containing thousands of narratives has been provided with the software to help us demonstrate to you how the software works. As the name would suggest, the narratives in this library are samples and are not intended to be used in an actual report, inspection or otherwise, and we assume no responsibility for their use. The narratives you ultimately use must be your own and reflect your personal level of knowledge and experience for your particular business, inspection or otherwise. For this reason all narratives will need to be edited and arranged in a manner that meets your business practices, and to meet any Country, State, local, or industry standards or licensing requirements that may apply. Editing hundreds or even thousands of narratives may seem like a time-consuming task but it does not take place all at once. Each time you select a narrative during the inspection process you either accept or edit it, and this way the narratives gradually become your own, helping to create your own personal 'identity'. Ultimately, it is up to you, the End User, to manage, and accept the responsibility for, the contents of your libraries and the use of the material they contain.

The sample library will always remain just that — a sample. If you delete the library, however, it will reappear in its original form the next time you launch the program or auto-update the program. This is why it is very important that you immediately create a duplicate of the 'Sample Narratives' Library and that the new library be named something other than 'Sample Narratives'.

For instance, if you pretty much stick to residential inspections, you might want to call the new library 'Residential'. Any changes that you make to the new 'Residential' library will be saved, and these changes will appear in the new library every time you launch the program.

Creating a New Library

The easiest way to create a new library is to make a copy of the Sample Narratives Library and then rename it. Once you've renamed it, it can be easily modified by highlighting the 'Categories' and using the 'Modify' buttons ('New', 'Modify', and 'Delete') to meet your needs. Using these buttons, 'Categories' can be renamed or deleted, and can be easily reordered by dragging and dropping. You can also drag and drop narratives contained within a 'Category', and even drag and drop them into other 'Categories'.

There are, however, other ways to create a narrative library. You can also create Libraries based on existing InspectMaster reports, and existing InspectMaster Libraries (saved as .imi files).

Backing Up and Saving Libraries

Again, one of the first things that you will need to do once you have familiarized yourself with the program is to create a library that meets your requirements. Once the library is created, it is stored (on a Mac) in the 'Libraries' folder inside the InspectMaster folder inside the Users folder (Users\yourusername\InspectMaster\Libraries\Narratives). In Windows, the path to the Narrative Library folder would be: Local Disk (C:)\Documents and Settings\Administrator\InspectMaster\Libraries.

However, you can easily locate your library or libraries by selecting 'Narrative Library' from the InspectMaster menu bar and clicking on 'Explore', and then following the path to the Libraries folder.

You should make copies of all libraries that you create and save them on a disk. This is because everytime you reinstall the software, it erases all existing files and reinstalls the originals.