One of our users experienced exactly the same bug, as described by Valentinas above, with Trados 2019 today - following the same use case. 

The user was using the New Project Wizard, selected a previous project as template, and cancelled after receiving the error "name does not exit" (or similar message). He then realized that ALL the projects from the folder where the previous project was located were physically ERASED.

About 50 projects (folders and related files) disappeared from the hard drive (but were still referenced in the projects.xml file) and had to be retrieved from a backup. Strangely, the main folder of the project that was used as template was still there (albeit empty), while there was no trace at all of the other projects.

The projects sitting on a different folder were not affected.

I see this issue was reported 5 months ago now. What is the bug id # and ETA for resolution?

It is a show stopper for us, as it does not just disrupt Production but can also potentially affect clients. We were already reluctant to migrate to 2019 – in part btw because the New Project Wizard is a step down from previous versions (ie Studio circa 2015 had a much better UI for selecting templates, and selecting languages from template) – now we don’t feel confident that we can use 2019 until this is fixed.

Hello  Hervé Thevenet ,

This issue is one that appears to affect only the very smallest number of users and is one that we have never been able to replicate at all so i do believe this is a local issue.

Looking through our support logs over recent years, I can only find, literally, a couple of other cases reported.

In one of the cases logged, support suggested the following ( which might be of use as you are working within an organisation).

This is an issue that could occur when you do not have full administrator rights
on your user or you have an anti-virus that treats certain file created from
Studio as a threat and thus deleting them. This is also why your projects
could be missing from the Projects view after restarting Studio or the PC.

The user confirmed a while later that this was the problem (AV) 

Maybe run through the following troubleshooting Wikis and ensure Studio is added to the AV whitelist (needs to be done after updating Studio as well)

https://community.sdl.com/product-groups/translationproductivity/w/customer-experience/3392/how-to-part-1-trouble-shoot-unexplained-errors-and-unwanted-behaviour-in-studio-multiterm

Thanks Steven but that does not apply in our case.Our users have admin rights (at least the user who experienced the problem does) and both the folders and projects' files extensions are excluded (whitelisted) from our AV settings.

Suggested steps to reproduce the issue are as follow:

1- create a few (more than one) projects with a few lang pair (and different settings/tm per lang pair), all placed in one specific folder

2- upload these projects to a Groupshare server

3- start the creation a new project, point to one of the projects created above to use as template, and attempt to force the error we noticed (adding a trailing space in the project name text box before adding files to the project does this, but other methods should be tried)

4- try the action a second time to get the error message twice, then cancel the project creation

5- in Explorer, open the folder where the projects should be to see if they are still here  

Repeat, varying step 3 (use different ways to get to the error msg) until the projects disappear from the folder

In case that is relevant: the user reported that several files were Checked out by him, while most files were checked in, in the project that he used as template.

Hello Hervé Thevenet ,

I think this is the first instance that anyone has mentioned Groupshare in conjunction with the disappearing files/folders mystery. (Or maybe this is an important piece of information that has been missed out previously?)

The steps you have listed, would I think suggests that the problem (in this case) lies not with Studio but perhaps with GS.

Therefore, I would suggest as you are using GS, please log a ticket as our support team will be able to look at this in depth.

Hello Hervé Thevenet ,

I think this is the first instance that anyone has mentioned Groupshare in conjunction with the disappearing files/folders mystery. (Or maybe this is an important piece of information that has been missed out previously?)

The steps you have listed, would I think suggests that the problem (in this case) lies not with Studio but perhaps with GS.

Therefore, I would suggest as you are using GS, please log a ticket as our support team will be able to look at this in depth.

Steven. The solution is more likely in the code of the New Project Wizard (why would Groupshare selectively affect projects on just one client folder AND leave the projects.xml untouched..).

Rather, in your investigation, ask your dev to look at the code that cleans the temporary folder when one hits Cancel on the New Project Wizard.

After rereading our notes, and comparing them with Valentinas' comments, I started to think the reference to the temporary root folder (which should be under the "Location path" presented by the wizard) could have been set to the wrong pointer after the first error message - and so the wizard would wrongly "clean" the location path instead of the temporary sub folder. That would explain.

Steven - can you please confirm that this issue is been investigated by the Studio dev team btw? It is not clear from your answers.

Hello Hervé,

Hi Steven,

I had the same problem last week (and many others related to duplications of files, TMs, etc) and it was solved by turning off the back up in time that my computer was carrying out. I had also hubiC on loading the changes made in my computer to the cloud; since I turned it off, I have no experienced the problem again... Ok, it has been only a week since then, but maybe it is a clue for you to look for the reason.

Kind regards

Isabel

Hi Steven - any update n this? Can you please confirm that this issue is been investigated by the Studio dev team btw? It is not clear from your answers.

Hello Hervé Thevenet 

Sorry about the delay in getting back to you. If you are replying in community, please 'tag' the person so they receive an email notification (please see below the top tip below

I have trawled through the actual logged support cases to see if I can pinpoint a single common identifier that could be a cause of this issue.

The following helped a user who has not reported any further issues since reporting 6 months ago

Apart from the possible reasons already mentioned in this post- it might be worth looking at particular admin rights/running Studio as Admin.

"Studio keeps the project list in the "Projects.xml"file located on C:\Users\username]\Documents\Studio 2019\Projects

When you add or delete a project from the project list Studio will automatically update the Projects.xml. If this xml cannot be edited due to the lack of user permission, Studio will no longer be able to retrieve the list therefore the projects will not be displayed in Studio Project list.

To solve this issue you can try the following:

1 Close all SDL products
2 Go to C:\Users\username]\Documents\Studio 2019\Projects
3 Delete "Projects.xml"file
4 Run Studio as administrator

If you don't have admin rights please request your IT dept to proceed.

By running Studio as admin the "Projects.xml"file will be automatically created, this will ensure the necessary rights to read/write the information from the XML, you can the n open Studio normally you should no longer encounter this issue."

Please let me know if this solution helps.

Hi. Read the problem description again, it looks like you may be answering another thread here.

The project.xml is not affected

The actual files & folders of multiple projects are deleted, with not possibiliy to undo  

Hello Hervé Thevenet ,

My response was generic to the topic of the thread in general as we try to get to the bottom of this.

I am more than happy to set up a remote Webex with you (and any other user experiencing the problems) to see if we can't get this resolved.

Please email me direct at (swhale@sdl.com) your availability, and we can set this up.

The WebEx would need to take place on a work station that is affected.

If you could produce the logfiles of the affected machine (and those of one that isn't)- these could help spot the problem-

A webex is not necessary - we were able to replicate the issue. Try this:

1. create a folder (i.e. name ther folder "TEST")

2. Create a project in that folder

-- use the default template, what is in this project does not matter
-- the only important thing is that the project location path is the TEST folder 

3. Start the Wizard again to create a new project:

-- use the "test" project created above as template
-- the "location path" displayed should be pointing to the TEST folder
-- make sure the Location path "autofill" check boxes is checked

4. Replace the Project Name by a space character

-- you can delete the file name and add the space
-- or just select and replace with a space

5. Cancel the Wizard

The entire folder TEST you created at step 1 is gone
-- including all the project(s) that you created in that folder

Hervé Thevenet

Thank you for these steps.  We have managed to replicate this another way, a less likely way, by doing this:

1. You need to have two different project templates, with different project location paths, to folders that are not empty.
2. Create New Project in Studio (using one of the two templates)
3. Delete entirely the suggested Project Name (observe the information message that the specified project location folder already contains some files), do not write another project name
4. Change the initial project template from the "Use settings from" drop-down (observe the pop-up information that this change will overwrite all of the settings.), click OK
5. Switch back to the initial project template

This should lead to having all the contents of that invalid folder deleted.

We have added your steps, which seem a more likely process for most users, to item CRQ-17166 which is the internal reference we have created for this issue.  It's clearly a critical issue and is tagged as such and will be resolved in the update after the next one.  We already have an update in Beta at the moment which will be released next week so there isn't time to include a fix for this, but it will be in the next update after that.

Thank you to all the users in this thread who reported this.

Yep, Studio has been doing this FOR AGES... perhaps even since the very first version.