i am having a few different issues, first issue is im trying to make a knock off logo using this GIF from the web. so i edited the gif perfectly used the trace bitmap to layer it down and and i guess to also vectorize it. did that. then i saved it. and it was still being saved as a GIF, and not a SVG even though i selected save as inkscape svg. and also when i tried to open it in other image viewing programs it says the image is damaged or i have to change the format. so i changed the format. i figured it was giving me static because it was originally a gif. so i used paint and saved it as a jpg. so now i have 2 of the same image both in GIF and in JPG. edited the JPG in IS, traced the bitmap everything i did before. saved it as a SVG, but still showed as .JPG in Finder. and was still saying that it was damaged and wouldn't let me view it. So i opened it back up in inkscape ungrouped the layers copied them and pasted them into a new doc inkscape. made the adjustments. and was finally able to save the image as SVG, however, now when i open it half half of my font is gone. Im using a TTF font that i downloaded earlier today. and i have two words in the picture both separately made cause one word is less letters (8) but is streched to fit the word below which is long (12). so i saved it as a SVG successfully. then when i tried to view it in Finder the 8 letter word is missing. I'm not sure whats the issue here. the i manually changed the .JPG to SVG by renaming it to svg then i was able to view the image but the 8 letter word is still missing. both words are the same font, so i don't think its an issue with the font.

You opened a gif, and with the save as you didn't rename it to anything but the original.gif I assume.
Resulting your svg file to have a .gif name, instead of .svg at it's end.
Resulting to be a raster file that those raster programs cannot handle.
Add a name to your work that doesn't containing any .gif or .jpg at their endings.

You probably made your 8 lettered word as a flowedtext which is not part of the current svg specification.
Press Shift+Alt+W when selected.

By the way I would suggest to use a wider kerning for the letters than scaling it to the size of the 12 letter word.
That scaling is unprofessional.

ok thank you. and also thank you for the advice. and also for future reference what exactly is a flowed text?

i have one more question/ need some help. as i stated before im trying to make a knock off logo using the trace bitmap. i traced the image down to about 3 layers which is perfect cause i want to put this on a tee shirt. however the font itself is a fourth layer and also a different color and i want to make it so that the font becomes part of the layers behind it. if that makes sense.

Here is the flow from the guide book:
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Text-Flow.html

Auto tracing won't create new layers.
It creates a group of paths, that you can ungroup and move each part to separate layers.

If you want to add some font to the group, you can group it with them, preferably after you ungrouped that traced parts.