IMATCH Loosing Folders?

[Josebr]

Twice now in two days IMATCH has given me that big banner at the bottom of the program telling me that one or more of my folders is "offline". Problem number one is that I don't move things outside of IMATCH and problem number two is the IMATCH is intelligent enough to give me that message, but does not give me a hint as to which one of literally hundreds of folders is "offline" I have to waste time opening and closing folders, than each sub-folder, in order to find the offending (and unmoved) folder. Why doesn't IMATCH provide a clue? Is there something I can do to highlight which top level folder it's in?

Again, I have not touched anything, these are old folders from when I first purchased IMATCH and have been in it's database since version 3.0.  Since I have not touched those folders, why is IMATCH suddenly finding them as missing?

By the way, using the term "online" is not the best way to put it. Your program should say that the folder in not in the program or something. But the words Online and Offline have to do with being on the internet and not with being registered in the program itself. I understand that this may be a language glitch. Thank you for your help.

[jch2103]

Are some of your folders on a removable drive or a NAS?

[sinus]

Why doesn't IMATCH provide a clue? Is there something I can do to highlight which top level folder it's in?

The clue is in the help.
There you can see, that one possibility to see offline-folders, are icons in the folder-view. Easy to find.

It make really sense to read the help-file. 

[Mees Dekker]

You can hide the off-line folders, but is there also a possibility to show just the off-line folders (i.e. by hiding the online folders?)

[Josebr]

All my photos are in an external hard drive which is never turned off or moved. My C drive is not big enough to hold my folders, hence my external hard drive. I do have NASs but they are part of my backups.

I read the help file, but being new to this version of IMATCH I am not sure to what the help file is referring too when it mentions an icon folder. It would be very very helpful if the help files contained more illustrations at each point of a paragraph so that I can learn to what the help file is referring too. I don't have the frame of reference that older users of IMATCH have. I will look again at the help file and try to decipher what it means. Else I will be posting more basic questions on this forum. Thanks for getting back to me.

[Mees Dekker]

See attachment and also : https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/#offline-files.htm

[Josebr]

Mees, thanks for sending the attachment. But I don't have entire top level folders offline. IMACH is not seeing a folder (each time it give me this message) which is at least three levels down. And it does not indicate at the top level folder which of all the top level folder contains offending offline file. I have my folders organized by camera (see attachment). Under each camera is a year-month and inside are the folders for each day of the month and inside of those folder are my photos for that day.  For Example
Folders:
Top Level -Canon G90: (Camera)
2nd Level - 2015-04 (Month of the year)
                - 2015-05 (Month of the year)
                - 2015-06 (Month of the year)
3rd Level       -2015-06-02 (Day of the month)
                     -2015-06-03 (Day of the month)
4th Level (photos)      -2015-03-141011.jpg (Year, Month, Day, Hour, Minute Second)
                                 -2015-03-141035.jpg (Year, Month, Day, Hour, Minute Second)
IMATCH is showing one of the days is offline, not the month or entire camera.

The attached screen shot shows what I am seeing (for the 3rd day in a row). Its show the big banner message at the bottom but it does not show in which folder the offline file is in.  I read the file referred in the bottom banner message, but the help file assumes that a top or second level folder is 'offline'. Not some folder within those folders. So I am having to look. Unless Folder view means something else I am stumped as to how to quickly fine the offending 'offline' file.

[Mario]

Whats with the folders on the C: drive? They are not visible in your screen shot, maybe there is an off-line folder?

The new check works as follows: After the database has opened, the engine checks all top-level folders to see if they are accessible. If not, it informs IMatch. And IMatch then displays the off-line info in the Notification area as a reminder.

I think I have implemented this correctly but this is a new feature and maybe it does not work correctly:

When I understand you correctly, you indeed have off-line folders in your database (with the yellow warning icon, see Off-line Folders and Files).
But not on the first level (folder without a parent folder).

[thrinn]

Is there something I can do to highlight which top level folder it's in?

Maybe not exactly highlighting some folders, but you can use the Filter Panel to find offline files: File Properties > Hide off-line files > Invert Filter. (Do not forget to check "Invert Filter"). If you need to use this often, you can store this setting under its own name, e.g. "Show off-line files only" - reciprocal to the standard "Hide off-line files" filter.

Again, I have not touched anything, these are old folders from when I first purchased IMATCH and have been in it's database since version 3.0.  Since I have not touched those folders, why is IMATCH suddenly finding them as missing?

From the IMatch point of view, because it could not access the file or folder by whatever reason. This is quite strange - never happened to me. But as you are using an external hard drive, double check if this performs reliably under high stress situations. I once had an issue with an external hard drive I used for backup where sometimes the check after backup failed because the backup was "corrupted". But after I used a different USB port on my PC (not the one at the top of the case, but one of ports at the backside) everything worked fine. So, there had to be some issue with the internal connections in my PC. Very difficult to find, and impossible to identify by a program that just reads and write data.

By the way, using the term "online" is not the best way to put it. Your program should say that the folder in not in the program or something. But the words Online and Offline have to do with being on the internet and not with being registered in the program itself.

I have to disagree. "Online" or "offline" only refer to something connected or not connected to another something (e.g. a power plant going offline). There is more than the Internet things can be connected to. And the folder is never "in the program" it is on the hard drive. And it is in fact still "registered in the program" - otherwise IMatch would not know about it. So, whatever terms one uses, there is always room for misunderstanding. Mind, my native language is German, so I can only describe how I would understand some terms.

[Josebr]

Mario,
The C: Drive did show offline/empty folders. These were from when I first used IMATCH 3.0 when I had all my photos on my C: Drive. They must have come into the database via my older version database.  This morning I removed those folders, about 10 of them all empty, from the database using the 'remove from database'.  Upon opening IMATCH a minute ago, the same folders came back up again. Why is IMATCH re-reporting them? I now dread opening IMATCH due to offline message and I dread closing the program in fear that it will corrupt the database.

[Mario]

IMatch does not add folders by itself, it only adds and monitors folders you have in your database.
When you make IMatch rescan a folder, IMatch notices that the "last modified on disk" timestamp reported by the file system is newer than the timestamp in the database or Windows sends IMatch a "folder modified" message, IMatch scans the folder and brings in a new and updated files and child folders.

If you have indexed the root folder of C:\ in your database, basically every folder on C: will be added to the database once this happens. If there is no folder on C: indexed by your database, IMatch will never add anything from C:.

It is impossible from your description to know exactly what you did with the folders on C:, if you left out one, or why IMatch would add folders again.
Always include the log file log file from the session where you experienced this. This will tell us exactly what IMatch did and why it would scan folders on a disk not longer indexed by your database.

I also understand that IMatch was right informing you about off-line top-level folders and that we did not see these because in your screen shot the C: drive was not expanded in the Media & Folders View. Else we would have seen the folders marked with the yellow off-line indicator. This is why its important to include as much info as possible when you report a problem.

[Mees Dekker]

Is there something I can do to highlight which top level folder it's in?

Maybe not exactly highlighting some folders, but you can use the Filter Panel to find offline files: File Properties > Hide off-line files > Invert Filter. (Do not forget to check "Invert Filter"). If you need to use this often, you can store this setting under its own name, e.g. "Show off-line files only" - reciprocal to the standard "Hide off-line files" filter.

You're right: the filter panel provides a possibility for off-line files. But the folder filter cannot be inverted (as far as I know). The easy way would be to include an "invert" check box for the folder filter.

[Mario]

Is there something I can do to highlight which top level folder it's in?

Maybe not exactly highlighting some folders, but you can use the Filter Panel to find offline files: File Properties > Hide off-line files > Invert Filter. (Do not forget to check "Invert Filter"). If you need to use this often, you can store this setting under its own name, e.g. "Show off-line files only" - reciprocal to the standard "Hide off-line files" filter.

You're right: the filter panel provides a possibility for off-line files. But the folder filter cannot be inverted (as far as I know). The easy way would be to include an "invert" check box for the folder filter.

Off-line folders are a rarity these times. They were much more common in the old days, when users worked with removable media like CD or DVD.
An offline folder always has off-line files, so the file filter is usually sufficient for the very rare case that the user is unable to find the off-line folder by looking at the Media & Folder View and checking for yellow warning icons. I don't think yet another filter or option is needed.

[Mees Dekker]

Off-line folders are really not that uncommon, when you use the same IMatch database on a desktop and (using P&G) also on a laptop when out "in the field" or otherwise away from home.

And as described: people won't be using CD's or DVD's these days but may have (very) big removable SSD's . I myself use such a SSD to have a selection of my files with me. All my files are on a NAS (at home) but by using a removable SSD, I can easily use IMatch to give a presentation or ingest photo's I've taken during a day. In the evening (in a hotel or my campervan) I can than ingest, cull, process them using ACR and/or Photoshop.

[Mario]

I understand. You are using a removable SSD. And two PC's and Pack & Go.

If the external SSD always gets the same driver letter assigned (a Windows setting) it will never be off-line, neither on the PC or your laptop.
Files indexed on the NAS will be off-line of course, but then you see a yellow warning icon directly on the topmost level, for the NAS itself (or it's top-level folder).
If you mirror the NAS files on the SSD for the other PC, you can use a portability setting to automatically relocate the folders when you use IMatch on the other PC.
In all cases, you won't be hit by surprise by your NAS being flagged as off-line or your external disk being flagged as off-line while it is not connected.

The {File.Offline} variable returns true or false. You could create a data-driven category based on this variable to quickly identify off-line files (and their folders), if this would be useful for your use-case.

[Carlo Didier]

Off-line folders are a rarity these times. They were much more common in the old days, when users worked with removable media like CD or DVD.

Allow me to disagree. Someone who travels with his laptop without all his files on internal storage (like me) regularly has many folders in the database offline.

[Mario]

I understand this. But then you will not be surprised that these folders are off-line and you will know (after a while perhaps) what the yellow off-line icon means.

In the original case of this thread, the user was irritated that IMatch told him that one or more folders where off-line. He considered that to be a bug, guessing that IMatch wrongly considered off-line folders on lower levels for this notification. As we have learned, the user actually had top-level off-line folders on the C: drive. So this has been resolved.