Trouble with My User Tools

[Gregory Dietrich]

I recently had to reinstall my system on my computer and when I reinstalled Accordance I was not able to copy back my User Tools. I have them all but I cannot get them to open. I created a text tool to see if there are any differences and have included a shot of the Info panes with this. Is there anything I am doing wrong, do I have to change a preference file? I am just frustrated now because I have a lot of Tools I have made. Any help would be much appreciated.

[Helen Brown]

It looks to me as if they lost their resource forks which identify the type of file. I wonder how you transferred them to the new system. Do you still have the originals? You can recreate thefile type with the old ResEdit program, if you know what you are doing.

[Joe Weaks]

Gregory,

First off, if you had the user tool files loaded before you installed Accordance, this non-identification is to be expected. A simple restart may help that if everything resides on your startup disk.

Explain your process a little further by answering these questions.

Is it that before you reinstalled your system, you backed things up on an external hard drive?

If so, how was the backup created? Dragging and dropping? Using a backup tool?

If so, can you mount that drive and try to add a tool from there to see if it still has the metadata?

Are your tools in the Documents folder of your home folder or elsewhere?

 

Joe

[Gregory Dietrich]

Joe: Thanks for helping out...here is the scoop.

 

I was getting a lot of software crashes, not just with Accordance, but a lot of things. I back up my HD every night so a reinstall is not that big of a deal normally. I backed up with Super Duper.

 

So I redid the install and then started to install things one by one. I first installed Accordance but then dragged over all my user files. So the app was there before the data.

 

My data is indeed in my Documents folder.

 

I have the original data on my HD still, but they have that funny looking terminal like icon (see attached).

 

Thanks again Joe for the help...is there any hope?

 

Greg

[Joe Weaks]

Joe: Thanks for helping out...here is the scoop.

 

I was getting a lot of software crashes, not just with Accordance, but a lot of things. I back up my HD every night so a reinstall is not that big of a deal normally. I backed up with Super Duper.

 

So I redid the install and then started to install things one by one. I first installed Accordance but then dragged over all my user files. So the app was there before the data.

 

My data is indeed in my Documents folder.

 

I have the original data on my HD still, but they have that funny looking terminal like icon (see attached).

 

Thanks again Joe for the help...is there any hope?

 

Gregory,

SuperDuper is the best available for preserving meta data in backup files. See this resource for more info on the issue:

http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/03/05/...under-mac-os-x/

 

While what you are describing shouldn't happen, and makes me think you have disk trouble, there is hope. I think it is unlikely that we'll not be able to salvage things.

First off, installing Accordance and then dragging the User Tool Files over without restarting intermittently would still probably cause the problem, however that problem should be fixed with a restart.

 

Let's start simple

When you open the Info panel on a User Tool, do you have an "Open with:" option? Can you set it to Accordance? If it thinks the file is an executable (application) it won't have it.

 

You can try to trick the registry by adding an extension like .txt first. Only do this working on a copy of the file. You may have to give it the extension, close the info panel, then change the extension to get it to take. You'll know the extension change has worked when the "Hide extention" option is available and/or it confirms that you want to change the extension. This will then for sure give you the option to set what app opens the file.

This still may not make the file visible in the Add modules options from within Accordance. But try it, as it'd be the simplest solution.

 

However, I doubt that will work. I'd try that on one file, and then move on to solution number 2 that I posted downstream.

 

Also, are you running disk utility to check both your drives for problems? Don't forget to check you backup drive, too.

[Helen Brown]

Personally I have never been able to recover a file that had the terminal Unix icon, so I'll be interested to see how you do it.

 

This is a good reminder to everyone to backup their own Accordance files: the ones in user/Documents/Accordance files and the user/Library/Preferences/Accordance Preferences. If you are using version 7 and OS X, all your work is saved here by default.

[Joe Weaks]

Helen, when I look into the resource fork of my user files, they are empty. I suspect then, that all that was lost was Creator Type and File Type.

 

So, as soon as we discern that first idea of fiddling in the 'Get Info' window fails, here's a second approach. I've written a little application for setting a file to have the Creator Type and File Type to match Accordance. It's called AccordanceFileTypeFixer.app and it's here:

AccordanceFileTypeFixer

 

Basically, you drop a file or files onto the app and for each one it tells you if the Creator code matches Accordance and if not, asks if you want to set it to do so, and then it checks if the File Type matches a type of Accordance, and if not, gives you a list of choices among different Accordance File Types to convert the file.

See the screen shot here:

 

The package also includes a generic applet for viewing and setting the Creator and File Types of any files (in case you need to set something back.)

Greg, I'm hopeful about this solution.

[Gregory Dietrich]

Just to polish off this topic, Joe is the man and his method worked awesome! Thanks for taking the time to help me out...I owe you now.

 

Greg

[Joe Weaks]

In a private message, Greg mentioned that the AccordanceFileTypeFixer application did the trick. (Not sure if he ever tried fiddling with the Get info box.)

For anyone who does lose the File Type and Creator Type associations on their Tools (ie. the icons go generic), this little droplet should do the trick.

[Helen Brown]

Thanks from me, too, Joe. had someone yesterday here who had generic icons on many modules, so that the installers would not update them. Your little app. worked like a charm.