I just got a new computer and have downloaded Tropy on it to continue working on my project. The project, documents, and files have all been moved over to the new computer through OneDrive and I made sure that everything for my Tropy project is downloaded to the computer. I was able to open both of my projects with no issue, except that the photos aren’t showing up.
I thought this might be because they were on OneDrive and not on the computer so I did a test with one set and downloaded them onto my computer but it didn’t fix the issue. The only thing that shows up instead of the photo is ‘Consolidate Photo’ but when I click it, it takes me to my files and wants me to select the photo to consolidate. It then seems like it will upload whatever photo I select, regardless of if it’s actually the correct photo.
Not too sure what to do moving forward from this, because I have over 30,000 photos so it’s going to be very challenging to go through each of them and figure out what photo it is.
If these are advanced projects, did you configure them to use relative or absolute paths (please don’t change the settings while checking; it’s only save to change the path setting when the project is fully consolidated)? If it’s absolute paths, then the issue is likely that the paths are different on the new computer. The easiest way to fix this for 30k photos will be to update the paths in project database. We can help you get that done quickly. If it’s a standard project or using relative paths, the issue will likely be about file permissions.
OK, if it’s a standard project then all the paths should be working. If Tropy can’t see the images it’s most likely an issue with OneDrive, as you’ve suspected, or with file permissions. If you select to download all files in OneDrive it’s still possible that not all files are actually downloaded, depending on your settings, the available disk space, your current network connection, and depending on how the files are hosted. Are you certain that you have the disabled the ‘files-on-demand’ feature for the project folder? If so, another way to test this is to turn off your network and check, in Windows Explorer whether the image files can really be opened. Otherwise, you could also try to move the project out of OneDrive temporarily.
So it looks like I’ve got everything working except one specific file, and I’m not sure why, because it’s downloaded onto my computer, not just the ‘files on demand’ version.
When you try opening the file, is there a corresponding error in the Tropy log file afterwards?
To make sure that the file is really where Tropy expects it to be, try right-clicking on the photo in the photo panel and select ‘Show Original File’: if the file is in the right place, then this should select the file in the file explorer.
It does take me to the file, but then if I try to open it independently of Tropy, it says there was an error opening this document and that the file is damaged and couldn’t be repaired.
How would I check the Tropy log file to see if there was an error?
Just try to view the file in Tropy and afterwards select Help → Show log files from the menu. There should be a corresponding error in the tropy.log file. But it the file can’t be opened by the external viewer that’s likely the cause of the issue. If you put the file in a zip file and upload it here we can take a look if there’s indeed an issue with the file.
Right, the error in the log file confirms that the image file could not be opened (likely because it’s damaged). However, the file Tropy tries to open in the viewer is not the original file, but a full-size copy it generated automatically, which just means that the original file is in a format that’s not natively supported (like PDF or TIFF). Could you share the zipped original photo file so that we can take a look at that? Ideally, also add the file C:/Users/rosem/AppData/Roaming/Tropy/cache/f257d752-bdc1-4371-9fa3-9a6a23513fa0/4100_full.webp to the ZIP archive (this is the version Tropy created but can’t open).
I don’t think I’m able to actually share the files here because of the nature of the privacy regulations surrounding them. Is there another way to workshop this without sending them?
Yes, you can send me the file here using a direct message. We look at the files only for troubleshooting purposes and we’ll delete them again afterwards.
The problem is I’m not sure whether I’m allowed to share the files with anyone. I’m waiting to hear back from the archive about whether I can share them
I do still have access to Tropy on my old computer where the file still opens completely fine on Tropy. Is there anything I can do from there to get it to work on my new computer?
OK let’s try to narrow down the issue. We basically have four variants of the same photo to account for:
A The original file on the new computer, which can’t be opened outside of Tropy, suggesting it might be damaged
B The image variant created by Tropy on the new computer (4100_full.webp), which also can’t be opened, presumably because it’s derived from the damaged copy A
C The original file on the OLD computer (we don’t know anything about it at the moment, but we’d expect it to be identical to A)
D The image variant created by Tropy on the OLD computer, which opens fine (it’s derived from C)
Now it would be useful to establish:
whether or not C can be opened on the old computer, independently of Tropy
and also whether or not A and C are indeed identical
and, finally, whether or not C is unchanged from when it was first imported
To do this you can again use 'Show original file` on the old computer and try opening the file there. Next, to check if the two files are really identical you can compute a checksum for them on the command prompt in Windows like this:
CertUtil -hashfile "C:\path\to\your\file.zip" MD5
If the checksums are the same, the files are identical on both computer. Finally, we could compare this to the checksum stored in your project file. To do this, open the project in Tropy and enable developer mode in the preferences window; close the preferences, and, back in the project window, select ‘Toggle Developer Tools’ from the Developer menu; in the Dev Tools, select the ‘Console’ tab and enter:
C will not open as a PDF on Adobe (which is the format it came in). I can only open it if I force it to open on Chrome. I just get a message that says there was an error opening this document and that it is damaged and could not be repaired. When I run the sumcheck the files show up the same
I have also started getting an error message when I open Tropy (screenshot attached) that seems to be associated with this project and now it doesn’t want to let me open the project at all
Okay, I was able to fix the issue with the Tropy file not working by transferring it over from my old computer again. But I still have the issue with the one file in the project
OK, so at this point it looks like the original PDF is damaged. Before trying to debug this in Tropy, I’d try to fix that file first. I assume it’s a PDF that was just a collection of embedded images/scans? In that case I’d try to extract the images into a folder and either work with those directly or create a clean new PDF collection.
Did you compute the checksum and look at Tropy’s checksum on the old computer? Since you can see the images in Tropy on the old computer, the original file must have been fine when it was originally imported, otherwise Tropy could not have created the image variants (D). For this reason I suspect the file was damaged after it was first imported. Can you check also check if tropy.state().photos[4100].created and tropy.state().photos[4100].modified match in the project? It could help pin down when the file was damaged. Incidentally, in case the file can’t be restored, you could still extract the image variants Tropy created on the old computer: these are full-size renditions of each page at your default resolution.
Please be careful with the project file. The error above could have happened if you opened the project file before it was finished copying or if a cloud/backup service was accessing the file while you opened it.
