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Projects not appearing in project list after change of Windows user name

Dan Lucas

Last month I was forced to change my work system, and the new PC came with a preinstalled user, "HP". I installed Studio 2019 (and most of my other software), then belatedly jumped through the hoops required to change the user name to "dan". Now my documents folder is "C:\Users\dan\Documents" which means that (for example) the default location for dropped files is "C:\Users\dan\Documents\Studio 2019\Projects\DropFiles".

This change to the user seems to have confused Studio 2019 - I say "seems" because I am not sure and I remain open to alternative suggestions as to the cause - and projects no longer appear in the Studio project list. All my ongoing projects reside in a certain folder that is not in the "C:\Users\dan\" path. I can create and save projects to this location as usual, and work without any problems. If I quit Studio and restart, the projects on which I have recently worked do not appear in the list. If I click on Open Project and browse to the required location I can open the project as normal. The project remains there for as long as Studio is running, but it disappears if I restart Studio. That quirk aside, everything works as normal.

This is, therefore, a minor inconvenience but it should not be happening. I am guessing that Studio maintains a registry entry or an .xml configuration file somewhere that specifies the default location for a list of recent projects or projects database, and that when I changed the name of the Windows user I broke the association in some way.

Can anybody provide advice on how to remedy the situation?

Thanks,

Dan
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    Studio knows where the projects are because it's stored in the projects.xml which is in the same place as the default location for your projects.  You changed the paths manually and now Studio hasn't a clue where they are because it's referencing files that are in a location that no longer exists.

    The first thing I'd try would be to run a repair of Studio, or even reinstall. That might "fix" the references that Studio is looking for and your projects will automagically appear.

    But if that doesn't work then you might be able to fix this with a little jiggery pokery... although I have not tested this, but it can't hurt.  Worst comes to worst you just have to delete the projects.xml (or rename it) and restart Studio.  Then open your projects one by one until you get back the ones you need.  So no worse off than you are now.

    The possible workaround.... in the projects.xml file you'll see things like this:

    ProjectFilePath="400 - DH Virtually Merged\400 - DH Virtually Merged.sdlproj"

    This is a reference in my projects.xml to a project that is stored in the default Studio location and so the full path is not required since Studio knows where this is.

    ProjectFilePath="C:\Users\pfilkin\Documents\SDL\Development\2020\Bench Testing\es(MX) - en(US)\500 - TMX project\500 - TMX project.sdlproj"

    This is a similar reference to a location Studio doesn't know as it's not in the default location.

    So I'm guessing that if you were to search replace all of your sdlproj paths with the full path to the location you have stored them then this may resolve your issue.

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

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  • 0 in reply to Paul

    Good morning Paul and thank you for taking the time to put this together.

    First, with regard to the projects.xml file, its full path is C:\Users\dan\Documents\Studio 2019\Projects\projects.xml and I note that it has not been modified since 30th August, which must have been when I installed Studio. I thought it might be a permissions / ownership issue but both seem in order - I have full access and my user account is listed as the owner.

    I took a look inside the file and there are no projects listed, so the ProjectFilePath string is not present. There is no reference to any project in there. (Tasks, and my identity, are listed, however.) Does this perhaps suggest that that Studio can't actually find projects.xml, even though it is in the default location?

    I attempted a repair of Studio, but that hasn't made any difference.

    This is not a major concern, as I suspect a reinstall will fix all ills, so I suppose my real motivation is to try to understand how it happened, and whether it can be fixed in situ.

    Dan
  • 0 in reply to Dan Lucas

    Dan Lucas said:
    suspect a reinstall will fix all ills, so I suppose my real motivation is to try to understand how it happened

    I believe it happened because you changed a windows path outside of Studio so now it has no idea where things are.  The projects.xml would probably have been recreated but is now empty since it's a new one that overwrite the original.  It's the same as if you were to rename the projects.xml... Studio will create a new empty one.

    Dan Lucas said:
    and whether it can be fixed in situ.

    Probably not.  I think the mechanism Studio uses for this is deep within the code and is not a user configurable setting.  I'd guess the process to go through if you need to make changes like this would be first copy the projects.xml somewhere else, then change the path in windows using whatever process you did to achieve this, and after restarting Studio to generate the new projects.xml, replace it with the original one.

    However, if you had any projects that were not in the default location then these would still not be found because the full path is in the XML as I showed above and there is no mechanism in Studio for this to be changed.

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

    ________________________
    Design your own training!
    You've done the courses and still need to go a little further, or still not clear? 
    Tell us what you need in our Community Solutions Hub

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  • 0 in reply to Dan Lucas

    Dan Lucas said:
    suspect a reinstall will fix all ills, so I suppose my real motivation is to try to understand how it happened

    I believe it happened because you changed a windows path outside of Studio so now it has no idea where things are.  The projects.xml would probably have been recreated but is now empty since it's a new one that overwrite the original.  It's the same as if you were to rename the projects.xml... Studio will create a new empty one.

    Dan Lucas said:
    and whether it can be fixed in situ.

    Probably not.  I think the mechanism Studio uses for this is deep within the code and is not a user configurable setting.  I'd guess the process to go through if you need to make changes like this would be first copy the projects.xml somewhere else, then change the path in windows using whatever process you did to achieve this, and after restarting Studio to generate the new projects.xml, replace it with the original one.

    However, if you had any projects that were not in the default location then these would still not be found because the full path is in the XML as I showed above and there is no mechanism in Studio for this to be changed.

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

    ________________________
    Design your own training!
    You've done the courses and still need to go a little further, or still not clear? 
    Tell us what you need in our Community Solutions Hub

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