How to make Affinity Photo to forget a used file address on my closed NAS? And start working again?

[Gerhard G]

MacBook Pro M1: Oops, on holiday and using Affinity Photo normally on my NAS address at home for saving! I shut that NAS down when leaving .... Now I am very sorry about that..

How can I prevent Affinity Photo from stopping at the very start, even when loading an Affinity photo file or canon file .CR3 or .DNG file from a new address on my Macbook?  And change the saving address in a new one on my Macbook? Trying all the time, rebooting Affinity Photo, tried to reset general settings, but that did not help!! What to do to get it working again on my journey?

[walt.farrell]

I think you need to delete the mru.dat file.

For more:

 

[Gerhard G]

Hi Wait,

Thank you for your quick reply! On my Macbook M1 I cannot however find the MRU.DAT file in free search or in library/ etc. Can it be named or placed differently? 

[thomaso]

51 minutes ago, Gerhard G said:

in library/

Just in case: Note the tilde character in Leigh's post, it represents your user folder: ~/library/…

Do you find the mentioned parent folder, named with the Affinity app name? – If it's not there check  
~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/Application Support/user/

If you don't find any of those Affinity folders: What app version do you have? Where did you purchase it? (Apple AppStore vs. Serif store)

[Gerhard G]

Hi,

The file cannot be found: But on user ** / apps

I find the affinity photo 2 app. I don't have a library map there..

I was an Affinity Photo 1 user.

I got the version 2  from the 'Affinity Team'. as stated in a Thanks for choosing Affinity mail.

5247b4cd276df3d7d0927230e387514df0d26189.rtfd.zip

[Gerhard G]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

Just in case: Note the tilde character in Leigh's post, it represents your user folder: ~/library/…

Do you find the mentioned parent folder, named with the Affinity app name? – If it's not there check  
~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/Application Support/user/

If you don't find any of those Affinity folders: What app version do you have? Where did you purchase it? (Apple AppStore vs. Serif store)

I think I choose the M1 version, is that correct for Affinity V2?

 

[firstdefence]

Try this...

• Download Path Finder: https://www.cocoatech.io/
• Install and run
• Press Cmd + F
• Run a search like the image below (click on the image to enlarge it)
  • 
• 

You can check which mru.dat you are deleting by selecting Reveal in Finder first

[Gerhard G]

10 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

Try this...

• Download Path Finder: https://www.cocoatech.io/
• Install and run
• Press Cmd + F
• Run a search like the image below (click on the image to enlarge it)
  • 
• 

You can check which mru.dat you are deleting by selecting Reveal in Finder first

YES, seems to work, I get a new window to open a file!!! Thanks a lot, you saved my Holliday!!

[firstdefence]

1 minute ago, Gerhard G said:

YES, seems to work, I get a new window to open a file!!! Thanks a lot, you saved my Holliday!!

You're welcome, enjoy the hols.

[Gerhard G]

Maybe something to remember for the Affinity Team?

[firstdefence]

10 minutes ago, Gerhard G said:

Maybe something to remember for the Affinity Team?

I use Path Finder most of the time and I like it for the dual window, I find it easy to drag and drop files and organise. So tried Path Finders search and it got the files straight away.

I tried a search just using Finder but no matter how I searched it never came back with a positive result, maybe I wasn't searching correctly but nevertheless Path Finder came to the rescue lol!

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, Gerhard G said:

The file cannot be found...

Please note that the user's Library folder (the one designated by ~/Library in UNIX notation) normally is hidden in all recent macOS versions, so you will not see it in Finder unless you follow one of the procedures detailed in this article (among many others a web search on 'show Library folder macOS or similar will reveal) to make it visible.

If you make it visible permanently (using one of the methods mentioned in the "How to Keep the Library Folder Visible" section of the article I linked to, you should be able to use Finder's search function with "MRU.DAT" as the search term to find all the files on your Mac that match that name. (Tested only with Catalina running on my Intel Mac but I think it should work the same with later OS versions & M-series Macs.)

[firstdefence]

8 hours ago, R C-R said:

Please note that the user's Library folder (the one designated by ~/Library in UNIX notation) normally is hidden in all recent macOS versions, so you will not see it in Finder unless you follow one of the procedures detailed in this article (among many others a web search on 'show Library folder macOS or similar will reveal) to make it visible.

If you make it visible permanently (using one of the methods mentioned in the "How to Keep the Library Folder Visible" section of the article I linked to, you should be able to use Finder's search function with "MRU.DAT" as the search term to find all the files on your Mac that match that name. (Tested only with Catalina running on my Intel Mac but I think it should work the same with later OS versions & M-series Macs.)

Probably why in Path Finder you can find them easily, There is a Top Bar Menu option to Show Invisibles...
 

The files are not actually hidden, although the ~Library folder is by default.

[firstdefence]

In Finder you can add a search attribute for file visibility, as well as other file attributes

Steps in finder...

• Start a search in Finder and add a search attribute, select Other...
  
• Turn on File Extension and File Invisible

Just something to give you better search options, the downside is Finder still doesn't find the mru.dat file, I even used the option for kind as Etc. So to Mac Finder the mru.dat file doesn't appear to exist. It will find other .dat files, so if you just use 'm' and not 'mru' it will find several dat files.