Deleted assets.propcol files are reappearing!

[John35]

Windows 10 - Affinity Publisher Problem – “deleted” files reappearing!

1.       1. Publisher would not start up

2.      2.  I then deleted, from the Publisher user profile, assets.propcol file (thought to be corrupted)and also deleted an assets.propcol_backup file that I had created earlier

3.      3.  Publisher then starts up and runs OK

4.      4.  Copied assets.propcol file (1,159 MB)from Photo to Publisher Appdata

5.       5. Publisher then started up and ran OK with all the Photo assets showing.

6.       6. Closed Publisher and it would then not reopen.

7.      7.  Checked Publisher Appdata and the assets.propcol file from Photo had been replaced with the deleted one from Publisher and the other deleted file also reappeared!

8.      8.  Then deleted the Publisher App and deleted the Appdata files separately, emptied the recycle bin, and ran CCleaner hoping to remove all traces of the deleted (corrupted) assets.propcol file from Publisher

9.      9. Reloaded the Publisher App which started up and ran OK and showed assets.propcol file at 1Kb.

110. Then again copied assets.propcol file from Photo into Publisher (as step 4)

111.   Publisher then started up and ran OK with all the Photo assets showing (as step5)

112.   Closed Publisher and it would then not reopen (same as step 6)

113.   Checked Appdata and the assets.propcol file from Photo had, yet again, been replaced with the deleted one from Publisher, and the other deleted file also reappeared although I had hoped to remove all traces of them!

Note that I can work around this as I can import individual .afassets file from my backups into Publisher and it then runs Ok even after several restarts.

However, surely I should be able to use a copied assets.propcol file without this reoccurring problem?

Questions.

How is it possible for deleted files to reappear?

Why does the deleted assets.propcol file keep reappearing and replacing the copied one from Photos?

Where is it being stored?

[walt.farrell]

A few thoughts:

1. You need to be sure that Publisher is not running before you put the assets.propcol file from Photo into the Publisher directory. It's possible you did that, but not obvious to me from your description. If Publisher was running when you moved in the assets.propcol file, that could explain some of it.
    
2. If the assets.propcol file is missing from the user directory when Publisher is started, Publisher will create one. But if there is one present then it should simply try to use it.
    
3. There is no way that Publisher (or any other Affinity application) could restore a file you deleted, such as an assets.propcol-bkup or assets-bkup.propcol or any other file. If you're saying that seems to have happened, then I suspect you must have been working in the wrong directory.

[John35]

Thank you for your reply Walt.

Firstly Windows does not allow overriding a file when its application is running. The App has to be closed before it will accept the assets.propcol file from Photo.

When publisher first starts up the assets.propcol file is present at 1Kb. After overriding it with the assets.propcol file (1,159,696 KB) from Photo it starts up with all the Photo assets present as I explained.

However, whilst this is open and still running with all the Photo assets shown, I check the Publisher  user profile and I notice that it has renamed the assets.propcol file to assets.propcol_backup1 and there is a new assets.propcol file (750,929 KB) of unknown origin.

After closing the App it will not reopen.

To double check this, I then deleted the new unknown Publisher assets.propcol file (750,929) and renamed the backup file (1,159,696 KB) that had appeared back to assets .propcol.

Publisher would then reopen with all the original Photo assets shown proving that somehow it had renamed it to a backup file.

However the user profile file shows that, yet again, it has renamed it  to a backup file.

So, I correct my original assumption that the originally deleted files are reappearing as, on checking, the two files above are of different dates and sizes to the original deleted ones. I was misled as the new files have the same names as the ones I deleted.

However, Publisher is still giving the copied file from Photo the suffix _backup1 and introducing a "corrupted" assets.propcol file of unknown origin but with the current date and time every time it is opened.

How and why is it doing this?

 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, John35 said:

Firstly Windows does not allow overriding a file when its application is running. The App has to be closed before it will accept the assets.propcol file from Photo.

You're right. Sorry.

1 hour ago, John35 said:

However, whilst this is open and still running with all the Photo assets shown, I check the Publisher  user profile and I notice that it has renamed the assets.propcol file to assets.propcol_backup1 and there is a new assets.propcol file (750,929 KB) of unknown origin.

Yes, that is interesting behavior. I tried it and I see something similar. The assets.propcol file I used from Photo gets renamed as assets.propcol_backup1 and there's a new assets.propcol that is much smaller (but is not the size of the default one).

I have no idea where it came from.

I can confirm that this also happens if I replace the assets.propcol file in Designer with the one from Photo. I have no idea why. Perhaps someone from Serif can comment about that, and provide info about where those new files come from.

(Wherever they come from, it sounds like your copy is corrupted.)

[John35]

Hi Walt

Glad that you have been able to replicate the same or similar.

What you don't say is whether your copy of Publisher and/or Designer still open up after the file renaming.

(I assume that they do as you suggest that my copied file is corrupted)

If they do open up, is the content of the assets the same, albeit from a smaller file, or do fewer assets appear?

Comment from Affinity would be most welcome!

[walt.farrell]

I will try to look at this further tomorrow, John.

[walt.farrell]

23 hours ago, John35 said:

What you don't say is whether your copy of Publisher and/or Designer still open up after the file renaming.

(I assume that they do as you suggest that my copied file is corrupted)

If they do open up, is the content of the assets the same, albeit from a smaller file, or do fewer assets appear?

Generally it seems that Publisher and Designer at 1.8 work, with the same set of assets but with a smaller assets.propcol file once they have started up. But I did get one failure when playing with the 1.9 beta where the new assets.propcol that Designer 1.9 created seemed corrupt, and I could not restart Designer 1.9 until I deleted it.

[John35]

Hi Walt

I thought that I would start from scratch today. I deleted the assets.propcol files from both Photo and Publisher, so that they started up and created the 1kb assets.propcol file in each.

I then created a new assets.propcol file in Photo by importing two previously exported  individual .afassets files.

I then copied this assets.propcol file into Publisher and started it up. As expected, it ran OK on first startup but converted the copied file to assets.propcol_backup1 and created a new smaller assets.propcol file.

Publisher would then not restart at all using this smaller file.

I then copied this smaller assets.propcol file from the Publisher user profile to replace the one I had created in Photo.

Photo would then not restart at all using this smaller file.

My conclusion is that the only way to transfer assets between applications is to export from one application and then import individual .afassets files one by one as required into the other application.

Copying and pasting assets.propcol files to the user profiles just does not work!! - Not for me anyway.

How do we get Serif to comment on this please?

[walt.farrell]

They will comment on it when your report reaches the top of their work queue, but there may be some impacts caused by their impending holiday break so I wouldn't want to try to predict when they'll get to it.

For now, using the officially supported methods of importing and exporting is best. If there is a bug here, then since it involves unsupported file manipulation it may be low priority. (But only Serif will know that for sure.)

[John35]

Thanks for that.

[Gabe]

Hi both,

Sorry for the delayed reply. 

Stuff you find inside the %appdata%\Affinity\ folders are not interchangeable. So messing around with propcol files from one app to another can lead to unexpected results. They are not accidentally in separate folders! 

However, ii don't think it should not prevent the app from starting. I could not replicate this here. Do you still happen to have the "broken" propcol file that prevents the app from starting? 

[John35]

Hi Gabe

Thanks for that information.

I attach the two files which are generated when I copied from one app to another and these prevent the Photo app from starting up after the first 'splash' screen.

I have just confirmed this by copying the files back into the Photo app.

Does this help?

[Gabe]

I've managed to replicate it in the meantime! I've edited your post as the file failed to upload correctly. 

Just had an update from our developers and this is not something we will be fixing. It falls into the same category as if you were to copy/paste files from the install directory. They are not meant to be interchangeable so anything can happen. 

[John35]

Glad you can replicate the problem.

I've just tried again - copying this file (1,437,200 KB) from Photo to Publisher. Publisher starts up first time showing all of the assets but, after closing, it will not start up again and I find that it has now changed this file into a backup file assets.propcol_backup 1 of the same size  and generated a new, smaller, assets.propcol file.(813.378 KB) which is presumably corrupt?

I guess this is what you also find? (Sorry, upload of file has failed again - I don't know why)