Sonny Software

Hello,
I've restarted using Bookends after a while; my library is about 6k entries with a lot of pdfs on a 2 years MacBook Pro. In the last days I noticed that Bookends is slowly responding: for example if I have a static group selected and I select another group it takes a while (half/a second) to see the changes and sometimes it appears the spinning ball. The same occurs when I make a live search and in other circumstances for example when clicking the triangle to open a folder. I remember BE being very fast and fluid, what happened? Should I do some maintenance or change something? Thanks a lot
Nestor

6K isn't a lot. I assume you have many PDFs. Are they "loose" in the default attachment folder or are they in many subfolders. That will slow things down. To see if that's the cause, close all panes (so only groups and references are showing). Does that speed things up?

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote: ↑Sat Apr 18, 2020 7:19 am 6K isn't a lot. I assume you have many PDFs. Are they "loose" in the default attachment folder or are they in many subfolders. That will slow things down. To see if that's the cause, close all panes (so only groups and references are showing). Does that speed things up?

Jon
Sonny Software

Thanks Jon, I set the view to basic and made a try but not significantly speed up...the disclosure triangle speed is ok now but moving from a group/folder/smart/group to another is still slow...

Then I'd try these:

1. Increase your internal db cache in preferences (20 MB should be fine, but go to 25, not much more or THAT will slow you down).
2. Rebuild the library
3. Quit and relaunch Bookends

Jon
Sonny Software

Thanks for the suggestion Jon, but unfortunately no luck; increased cache to 25 mb and rebuild but the GUI is still very unresponsive

If you can, you might try another Mac to see if there's something local that's going on.

Jon
Sonny Software

Thank you, but no luck...due to lockdown I can't access to any other mac...
Any other hints? I'm working quite a lot in BE during these days and it's becoming frustrating

Your Guest account?

Jon
Sonny Software

Sure! I didn't think about it! I tried this:
- installed bookends
-downloaded from the cloud the library
-everything was smoother BUT, obviously the library couldn't find the attachments (they're in iCloud folder; so I see the clip but the attachment pane says "can't find the attachment); I'm saying this because I guess it can be different for the app to manage a library with pr without thousands of attachments..
thank you Jon, so..what's next?

Did you tell Bookends that the default attachment folder was the iCloud folder in the guest account?

Jon
Sonny Software

Ok I managed to link to the correct attachment folder: so library has all attachments in place. General use seems a lot better, I only notice a slight lag when moving from some group/folder to "all"
Uninstall and reinstall BE (in my real account) could help?

Worth a try. If it doesn't, reboot in safe mode (Shift key held down) and see if that makes a difference. Something (another process, a problem with the OS installation, whatever) is affecting Bookends. I don't know if you're running antivirus software, but that's always a good place to look.

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2020 10:17 am Worth a try. If it doesn't, reboot in safe mode (Shift key held down) and see if that makes a difference. Something (another process, a problem with the OS installation, whatever) is affecting Bookends. I don't know if you're running antivirus software, but that's always a good place to look.

Jon
Sonny Software

ok thanks I'll make a try

Hello Jon, I uninstalled BookEnds from my mac and reinstalled, downloaded the library from the cloud to see what happened. I took some time to test. Tried also to reboot in safe mode but nothing changed (all the system is much more slow…)
Apparently immediately after downloading the library from the cloud everything was smoother but after a while all gets slow as before. I give you some data that may help: my library contains 6K entries and the library.bdb is 33 MB. The Bookends attachments folder in iCloud is about 20 GB (I have a lot of scanned documents). I’d rather using just a single library but do you think that with this amount of data would it be better to divide it in smaller libraries? Moving from a group to another, searching etc. is very slow and sometimes BE crashes…

I don't see that you responded to an early question. Are your PDFs loose in the attachment folder or are they in subfolders?

Jon
Sonny Software