If you kept all your designs on disk or cd, you wouldn't have to worry about computers crashing and lost designs. I had several crashes and have my designs and important documents. The only thing I keep on my computer is the programs.

Why not get Embird for around $99 that does exactly what you want it to do.

Also PE design is for home use only, not business related.

I do have all my designs on a hard drive and on disks, I have lost my fonts that were built in to the program itself which I believe was an upgrade... I run a business from home where I sew projects for people and personalize them with monogramming and embroidery...I don't see how a program can be specifically for business or personal- once you purchase it- it is yours to use however...? I have trouble looking at my designs as well- so an album of my designs is not just to use to show my customers it is to save me hours of time searching for specific pictures...

Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management >
Storage > Disk Management and right click on either Format or Change
Drive Letter, depending on your task.

What do you mean...? I can access all my files on my disks and hard drive... I am just missing the fonts that I thought PE Design came with... Like the one on my hubby's computer still has Curlz and mine since the format does not have it anymore... What do I need to do to recover those fonts in the drop down menu? I didn't know if there was a patch I had downloaded and have forgotten about...I really haven't messed with it since I got started last year... Maybe I've forgotten about an upgrade or something I did...

The only suggestion I can make is to uninstall the program and upgrade, do a search on your computer for PE Design and delete those folders, shut down your computer, restart, do a search for the program folders and directories again to make sure they are completely gone, and reinstall the program using the disks you received when you bought the program, install the upgrade, and then look at the Brother download site for any fixes, especially if you have service pack 2 on your computer which will do strange things to some programs and accessories such as reader/writer boxes, printers, and cameras. When you reinstall, make sure your virus protection and firewall are off. Also go into control panel and fonts and see if your embroidery fonts installed there.

After everything is installed and working correctly, move any designs on the hard drive to cd or disk and keep them there so you have more memory to work with PE design in the future and no risk of losing designs again.

You can categorize designs by type on a cd for each design type, flowers, fonts, animals as an example, and then print the design out and keep the notebook categorized by that cd type, --we did this for years for word processing in business numerically or my person's name so we could find files quickly.

When you download purchased and free designs, there are "terms of use" written somewhere on the sites or on the purchased card. The copyright issue has caused more than one person on Garden Web, other sewing sites, and E-Bay a lot of grief, time and money...just a friendly, concerned caution so you don't end up a victim.

With sewing/embroidery machines, there is a warranty issue.

A notebook of designs is a good idea as well as renaming designs that have a descriptive meaning to you. Once you get your PE design going, you should have the ability to bring the design up and then print it along with the color definitions if included. Some free designs have a .jpg file included along with the color changes that makes it easy to print out.

How would I go about printing out the designs... or would I have to bring up each design and then print them...I just need to know how to access them... I have a portable hard drive for my files only... we had our computers crash last year and that's when I bought them... right now the only way to see them is to open my pe design and look through them in either the open file box or the import... is there a way to look through them without having to open them thru ped?

Well I figured out how to print from the disks... you use design database and print off contact sheets... it's very easy- wish someone had told me that's what it was for a long time ago! I've been trying for weeks to figure it out! Thanks so much!