[Snard]

I like the new Diagnostic section & its check for songs with missing files. However, there is one anomaly I've noticed, and a feature I'd like to request.

The anomaly is that it currently lists placeholders that I've created. Of course those don't have files, but I assume there is a way that they can be excluded from the "missing files" list.

The feature I'd request is the ability to edit the damaged songs from this list, so I can fix them. I have tried long pressing the name, but nothing happens. If there is already a way to bring up the song editor, please let me know what I am missing.

Thanks,
Mike

[GraemeJ]

This all came about as a result of this thread - http://zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/forum/...p?tid=2663 .

It's very early days, but I think there will be some further expansion of the basic principle. Your point about Placeholders has already been raised but, at the moment, there is no way to exclude them. It's a double-edged problem, as some people may well attach files to a Placeholder (audio during a break, for example) so these users would want to know if any audio file was missing.

As you have already discovered, the tool merely reports a problem and has no means of rectifying it. I'm not absolutely certain what you would want it to do. If a song has a missing file, then it's probably just as easy to delete it from the library and re-import from your backup.

[Snard]

As you have already discovered, the tool merely reports a problem and has no means of rectifying it.  I'm not absolutely certain what you would want it to do.  If a song has a missing file, then it's probably just as easy to delete it from the library and re-import from your backup.

Actually, I wouldn't want to delete and reimport it, since that would require re-entering all of the metadata for the song. It would be more straightforward to edit the song and reattach the files via Dropbox or Google Drive (I've already had to do this when image files were accidentally corrupted because of a previous 'bug'.)

[GraemeJ]

I haven't tried it myself, but maybe the 'swap file' function would do what you want?

[Zubersoft]

I suspected that someone would ask me for the ability to fix songs in that list by swapping in a new file. It will unfortunately require some effort to add this (I will have to mimic what the library screen does), but if it will be useful to people, I can certainly do it.

[GraemeJ]

If we can get to the root of the vanishing files problem, it really shouldn't be necessary and will save you a lot of work.

[sciurius]

... since that would require re-entering all of the metadata for the song.

I maintain all my metadata in external databases (been doing that for years) and I wrote a tool to transfer the metadata from my database to MSPro. However, this is very specific for my situation and I do not see a practical way to make this sufficiently generic. If anyone has ideas how this could be done I'll be interested to know.

[Snard]

I appreciate the thought of adding "swap file" functionality, but I think that is more than is needed; simply having a way to pull up the song editor from the "missing files" list would fit the bill for me. In some cases, the missing files have been for songs that had multiple image files (one per page), not for multi-page PDFs. For one of the damaged songs, only one of the images was missing. It's my understanding that "swap file" wasn't intended to swap multiple files at once anyway.

Thanks again,
Mike

[GraemeJ]

I'm inclined towards the view that what really needs to be done is to nail the reason why these files go missing!! Without doing that, then we are all going to wonder when it might catch us out at the wrong moment.

If the problem is solved (and I'm certain Mike is looking into it) then the replacement of missing files will not be necessary anyway.

I think we should wait before asking for any extensions to any diagnostics - more important to find the cause than to use sticking plasters.

[Snard]

I agree that it's appropriate to find the cause of the problem and fix it, which I assume is one of the reasons that the diagnostic section was added. Detecting when & where the problem has occurred is a good first step. But besides detecting these problems, I think it's important to give users a convenient way to fix them. Currently, I need to write down (or memorize) which songs reported missing files, then go to the song list, find them, and fix them by whatever means (song edit, swap files, etc.). Then I go back to the diagnostics section and see if there are any I missed. It's kind of tedious.

In my case, the problem seems to have occurred in my "non-Pro" MobileSheets library at some point. I made a backup and subsequently restored in MobileSheetsPro, and looking back at my MobileSheets library, the same songs seem to be broken there. It's possible that the bug that caused the files to be deleted was related to an older backup/restore that I did in the past.

Actually, on further reflection, I am now recalling one situation that Mike fixed in the past, that could explain some of the missing files. There are cases where I am linking to the same image or PDF files from different songs, and some of those songs were the ones which were reporting the images were not present. There is logic in the backup process for not adding a shared image file multiple times to the backup file, and there may have been a previous bug that did not correctly link the multiple songs to the shared images/PDF in some cases. (Mike may remember this).

Another thing to consider is that MobileSheets managed image files differently than MobileSheetsPro (I am letting Pro manage the image files, as recommended). Therefore, my "non-managed" backup could have been damaged in other ways that caused the restore process to be incomplete.

Thanks again for talking about this and suggesting ways to correct the problem.

Mike S.

[AndyL]

I just tried this search and of the 500+ songs in my library only 3 had files that were missing. When I checked back to MS they were missing there too. So I would guess they were never copied over to MSPro and I hadn't noticed yet.

So I would support the theory that this is something "old" and "to be monitored"

Andy