William Stein 

William Stein said:

In any case, this is a sort of system error rather than misuse on my part so I would appreciate it if you could answer without the contract on last time.

This sounds more like a problem with OneDrive ... for example.  If you have got OneDrive active on your machine I'd recommend moving anything to do with Studio out of there as the synch mechanisms in OneDrive are fraught with problems... just google it!

You may have to open up your projects manually (Ctrl+O) once Studio is running and select the projects again.  I think your projects.xml was lost hence the reappearance of the sample etc.  So your projects should still be on your drive...I hope!

I finally the translated files of my current project on the hard drive (I hope the same is true of all my old folders/projects that mysteriously disappeared from Studio when I signed into the Cloud (a good name for a place where everything goes missing).

My comments:

1) the error message  "error occurred whilst...." is worse than useless because it doesn't provide any solution (i.e. it basically says: We screwed up so you're screwed!"). Here's what you should display: "We found alternative versions of the project/files you are trying to open at these locations: (display file paths to the different versions). Please select/browse to the folder with the desired version below." 

2) If compatibility with OneDrive is the problem  (which is possible because there may be different versions on OneDrive and my harddrive, then you SHOULD WARN USERS OF THE VERY SERIOUS RISKS of signing up for the Cloud instead of just enticing us to sign up for it  like it' s a real treat. You can invite users to serve as guinea pigs in a Beta phase instead of acting like all  the major glitches have been ironed out. Personally, I signed out of the Cloud and will never sign into again.

3) I would greatly appreciate it if you have a good solution for tracking down all the files/folders (not to mention all  my user settings) that disappeared.

William Stein 

William Stein said:

the error message  "error occurred whilst...." is worse than useless because it doesn't provide any solution

The error message actually says this according to your title:

"Error occurred whilst trying to identify version of files"

I think that gives a pretty good clue and is why I suggested OneDrive as being the culprit.

William Stein said:

Here's what you should display: "We found alternative versions of the project/files you are trying to open at these locations: (display file paths to the different versions). Please select/browse to the folder with the desired version below."

It's a computer program for translating!  How is it supposed to know where you, or your computer, put these files?  You created that suggestion but you're a human with a brain, far more powerful than your computer, and yet you don't know where they are either!

William Stein said:

If compatibility with OneDrive is the problem  (which is possible because there may be different versions on OneDrive and my harddrive, then you SHOULD WARN USERS OF THE VERY SERIOUS RISKS of signing up for the Cloud instead of just enticing us to sign up for it  like it' s a real treat

You signing up to the cloud is a complete red herring and has nothing to do with this problem.  The reason I said "Google it" is because this problem with OneDrive is a generic issue for users working with OneDrive and not just those working with Studio.  The error message pointed me to it, nothing else, and synching files is a problem I see users having with OneDrive generally.  I have turned off OneDrive from synching most of my folders for this reason and it has nothing to do with Studio.  I back up my working files in a different way and not by using OneDrive.

William Stein said:

I would greatly appreciate it if you have a good solution for tracking down all the files/folders (not to mention all  my user settings) that disappeared.

I don't.  If OneDrive is the problem then I suggest you "google it" as there is a lot of advice around synching problems with OneDrive or you contact the OneDrive Support Team for help.

I was  tpo busy to reply until now because I had to translate like a maniac for obvious reasons but I couldn't agree less with you comments

You put the blame for the disappearing files .on OneDrive  with no evidence or troubleshooting whatsoever and claim that my bringing the  RWS cloud into the picture is just a "red herring". That is nothimg short  of delusional because:

I've been a Trados user for over a  decade and never had any similar problems with disappearing files before and this problem occurred for  the first time ever and immediately    after signing into the cloud for the  first time. The  chances of that being a mere coincidence is like getting five royal flushes in a row in a poker game. 

I tried to  log into OneDrive for the first time to see my  Trados files were stored  there, but I learned that OneDrive isn't even activated on my PC.

You say that a computer is not as powerful as a human brain and can't possibly know where my fiies äre stored but the :message "Error occurred whilst trying to identify version of flles" clearly means that the system encountered  at least two different versions of the files.in tywo different locations so the system does indeed know where it encountered those different versions. If it really had no idea where the two or more different versions are (and one of them was in the default location of ....Studio 2021/packages) it could never have known there were two  different versions. It therefore should have shown me where the two different versions are located (if it really doesn't know, it could never have observed the difference)a nd asked which of the files I  wished to process instead, of clearing the existing lists of folders and files like some mad  terrorist.  

In any case, i don't see how that trivial problem could have led to erasing all my files and sending a virgin copy of Trados with no user settings and no files other than the samples.

You have always been very helpful in the past so I hesitate to bitch about this but it was a bg problem with bad financial consequences.

p

William Stein 

ok - I wont argue with you, or try to explain why the application would know the files were different but not necessarily be able to find the actual files.  I blamed OneDrive because it can be problematic for any files on your computer, and because you said "If compatibility with OneDrive is the problem  (which is possible because there may be different versions on OneDrive and my harddrive", so it seemed more and more like the root of the issue.

So let's go back to making sure you have the current version of 2021 installed.  Do you have these versions installed?

Trados Studio 2021 - 16.2.12.9338
MultiTerm 2021 - 16.2.1.1044

If not, please update so we know you have all the fixes that are currently available for the 2021 version of the software.