Groups messed up after file transfer

[hareiko]

Hi Jon,

I work partly at home with my desktop Mac and – when travelling – on my PowerBook. I use BE 9.2.2 on both. I have created several static and dynamic groups, partly sub-grouped in folders and ordered not alphabetically but according to my wishes. I have experienced the following funny behaviour in the group list:

After moving my actual BE database from my desktop Mac to my PowerBook I find the database opens with a completely disordered group list. The previous order of groups is not retained. The groups within folders turn up twice, once within their folder and a second time outside the folder (indented in the group list). Group contents are retained. by the way. and both the group within the folder and its second representation outside the folder contain the original references o.k.

After transferring the database back to my desktop Mac, i find this disordered list on the desktop Mac as well. And even worse: When I open the previous version of the database that is still on my desktop Mac it has the same disordered group list with the duplicated within-folder-groups.

What happened?

Hans-Reinhard

[Jon]

Hi,

It sounds like the groups table pointers are out of whack. I'd download Bookends 9.2.2 again, because one bug in groups (dealing with folders) was fixed. And start fresh, which in this case means rebuilding your database (*without* keeping user info).

I've had several reports of this, but so far after making new groups from scratch no one has reproduced the problem. If you find you can, please let me know.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Gerben]

This also happened to me and i used the following method to create a new db:
- i selected the references in each group and than gave them a unique name which i added to the notes field with the Global Change > Change Field command from the Refs menu.
- i rebuilt the old db without keeping the user settings
- i searched for each unique name and turned the hits into groups again with the New Static Group command

The advantage of this method is that references belonging to different groups will end up in those different groups again. It also works relatively fast, although it still took me a couple of hours (my db has > 3000 refs in about 80 groups sorted in 15 or so folders,; just to give an idea of the time).

Hope this might somehow help!

Gerben

[Jon]

- i searched for each unique name and turned the hits into groups again with the New Static Group command

One cute little trick some users may not know about is that if you drag a bunch of references onto white space in the groups list (or onto the top of the list, where All and Hits are), when you drop them Bookends will offer to place them in a new static group. A bit nicer than using the "New Static Group" menu.

Jon
Sonny Software

[hrashid]

Sounds like what happened to my DB as well. Glad that mystery is solved.

Jon, I understand the advantage of the silent update, but would it be possible to mention it in the announcements section, or perhaps integrate the Sparkle framework? That way those of us who read the discussion board, but not every thread, know when we need to d/l a new version.

Thanks,
Hussein

[Jon]

I am convinced that there is no right way to handle this. I fix minor bugs as they arise and inform those affected, then enumerate them in the announcement of the next numbered update. Given that our update cycles are quite short (6-8 weeks or so) this works pretty well.

Jon
Sonny Software