These are the questions that come up once you're actually living in AstroWatch day to day — not what it does, but where your data lives, how the free/pro split actually behaves in practice, and what to do when something doesn't work the way you expect. For feature-by-feature detail, the rest of these docs cover that; this page is the troubleshooting layer underneath it.
Where is my data stored?
Everything — every profile, chart record, life event and setting — lives in a single SQLite database
file named astrowatch.db. Because AstroWatch ships as a packaged app, Windows redirects its
local data folder to a per-package location rather than a plain folder you'd stumble on by browsing
AppData directly:
%LocalAppData%\Packages\<PackageFamilyName>\LocalCache\Local\AstroWatch\astrowatch.db
There's no separate settings file — calculation settings, aspect orbs, body visibility and everything under Calculation Settings live in the same database as your profiles.
How do I back up my profiles?
Profiles → Import/Export exports every saved profile — birth data, place, notes and
Life Events — to a single .awp file, and can re-import one later. It's free on both tiers,
with no Pro gate on the dialog itself.
Profiles → Import/Export
Reachable from the Dashboard and the Expanded Chart View identically.
Export
Saves every profile currently in your database to one
.awpfile — plain CSV under the hood, so it opens in a spreadsheet if you're curious.Keep the file somewhere outside AstroWatch
A cloud drive, an external disk, wherever you keep other backups — not inside the app's own data folder.
Import on the same or a new install
The same dialog's Import tab reads the .awp file back in — also accepts plain
.csv/.txtin the same shape.
This covers profiles and Life Events, not custom calculation settings or aspect customizations — there's
no dedicated whole-database backup feature. If you've heavily customized orbs, colors or body visibility
and want to preserve that too, copy the astrowatch.db file itself from the path above.
astrowatch.db — before you uninstall or reset the app, especially ahead of a reinstall or a new PC.How do I activate Pro?
Pro is a one-time Microsoft Store purchase — a durable, lifetime add-on, not a subscription. There's no license key to type in and no separate account to log into; ownership is checked directly against the Microsoft account you're signed into on that device. The upgrade prompt anywhere in the app opens the Store's native purchase flow, or falls back to the AstroWatch Store listing if the in-app flow isn't available.
Why did my Pro features disappear?
AstroWatch checks your Store entitlement once, at launch — it doesn't keep re-checking in the background while the app is open, and it doesn't store its own separate "I'm activated" flag anywhere in its database. Every time the app starts, it asks Windows fresh, and by design it fails safe to Free whenever that check can't complete — no Store association, no internet at that moment, or any other reason the lookup fails.
Can I use Pro on more than one device?
Yes, in the sense that ownership follows your Microsoft account rather than one machine — install AstroWatch and sign into that same account on another Windows device, and Pro is recognized there too. AstroWatch itself has no device-count check, license server, or seat limit of its own; this is entirely Microsoft Store account behavior, not something the app enforces.
What exactly do I get with Free?
Free covers full Natal, Transit and Return charts, the live Aspects dashboard, the Sun & Moon dashboard, Placidus and Whole Sign houses on the Tropical zodiac, three chart themes, saving profiles, and profile Import/Export — a genuinely complete core practice, not a crippled demo. Pro adds the Sidereal zodiac and every ayanamsha, the remaining 26 house systems, the full Vedic suite, the Aspect Calendar and Graphic Ephemeris, extended bodies and minor aspects, Synastry and multi-wheel comparison, the rest of the wheel themes, and unwatermarked, uncapped exports and reports. One nuance worth knowing: Free isn't locked out of exporting entirely — Export Profile Report and chart PDF export both work on Free, just watermarked and capped in length; Pro removes both limits rather than unlocking the feature from scratch.
Why can't I enter a birth year before 1900?
Two different limits are easy to confuse here. The Calculation Settings dialog advertises a Swiss Ephemeris calculation range of roughly 5400 BCE to 5400 CE — that's what the underlying engine and its bundled data files can compute. But the actual New/Edit Profile form's year picker only lists 1900 through the current year, so that's the practical range you can type a birth date into today, regardless of what the engine underneath is capable of.
The Year dropdown's floor is 1900 — the Swiss Ephemeris engine underneath can go far wider, but this form can't type a date past it.
How does AstroWatch handle timezones and daylight saving?
You don't enter a UTC offset by hand — AstroWatch looks up the timezone automatically from the birth place using an offline city database, then converts local birth time to UTC using a proper historical timezone library that accounts for daylight saving rules at that place and date, including the awkward edge cases (a birth time that falls inside a "spring forward" gap, for instance, resolves leniently rather than throwing an error).
One inherited-data edge case: if a profile was created without a stored timezone — most likely one imported from a very old source — AstroWatch falls back to treating its birth time as already UTC rather than guessing a zone. If an old imported profile's chart looks time-shifted from what you expect, that's the first thing to check.
What happens if a chart fails to calculate?
Quietly, by design choice rather than oversight: AstroWatch has no dedicated "ephemeris file missing" or "calculation failed" dialog anywhere in the app. If a position genuinely can't be computed — a date outside the loaded ephemeris data, most likely — the affected planet is simply omitted from the chart rather than surfacing an error message.
How do I report a bug or request a feature?
Help → Report a Bug or Suggest a Feature, from any screen, opens an in-app form — there's no need to leave AstroWatch or hunt down a contact page. It sends your message along with the app version and your current edition (Free or Pro) directly to AstroWatch's support inbox. If that fails — no connection at that moment — it automatically falls back to opening your default mail app with the same message pre-filled, addressed to AstroWatch support.
What's next
That's every planned topic in these docs. If something you're looking for isn't covered anywhere here yet, Help → Report a Bug or Suggest a Feature reaches AstroWatch support directly from inside the app.