Six Scratch troubleshooting tips
Saving Project Versions
I can't tell you how many times I've made significant changes to a project, and before I knew it, I had no idea how to get back to where I started. This is OK if your changes are always perfect, but that's rarely the case.
The easiest way to make a backup of your project is to use the File | Save As option in Scratch to create a new copy of the project before making significant changes. This might be on a sprite-by-sprite basis or it might be anytime you anticipate making many changes.
The other quick way to preserve your original script before making changes is to duplicate the script and copy it to a blank part of the scripts area. You can right-click on a script and choose duplicate. Make sure you remove any of the control blocks that would normally run the code, such as when flag clicked or when I receive (). You can also duplicate a sprite, which will preserve the sprite and all the scripts in it.
While saving your script isn't necessarily a troubleshooting step, it will bail you out of trouble.
Using Help
Sometimes you will encounter a block that you're not familiar with. Scratch has a built-in help file for each block. Right-click on any block and choose help. The help file will provide a brief explanation and a short script to demonstrate how the block can be used.
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