I’m experiencing the same problem as this other user. Basically, I see the thumbnails for my photos, but when I go to the item view I get the triangle with the “photo not found” error. When I consolidate by giving Tropy the information of where the photo is stored, it starts consolidating the entire library, which makes everything very slow (and does not solve the problem for the future). This happens with some files and not others, I haven’t been able to identify the pattern.
To my knowledge, I have not changed the location of the files. All my files are on Google Drive, which I use in the desktop version. I have recently changed computers and I’m now accessing the files from a different computer, so that may have something to do with the problem. I use Windows 11.
Please note that Tropy will only try to consolidate the entire library, if you confirm the prompt after successfully consolidating a single photo. That is to say, that if this you don’t necessarily need to consolidate the whole library every time you fix a single path.
If you’ve switched computers it’s easily possible that the paths to your photos have changed (for example if your username is spelled differently). In most cases it is easy to identify what changed by comparing the old and the new path. The next time you find a photo that is ‘missing’, try to make a note of where Tropy is looking for the file. You can see the path, for example, by moving the mouse cursor over the photo’s filename in the metadata panel (only visible while the photo is selected) – this should show a little popup with the full path. You can then consolidate the photo by selecting it again at its actual location. By comparing the two paths it should be obvious what part of the path has changed.
Hi! Thank you for this advice. I see now where Tropy is trying to look for the files, and I can see what the problem is, but I don’t know how to fix it.
I store all my photos in a folder in Google Drive (with subfolders within). On a separate folder on Google Drive, I make regular back ups of my tropy projects.
I know see that my current project is not stored where I thought it was, but it is actually stored in the back up folder. And Tropy is trying to find the photos in this same folder. I have the “link photos relative to the project file” option clicked because I was told to do this in order to access Tropy from two computers.
How should I fix this? Is there any way I can massively consolidate all my photos by telling Tropy to look for them in the photos folder instead of the back up one?
Yes, in your scenario it’s best to link the files using relative paths: that way it should be possible to open the project from multiple devices, as long as the folder structure on Google Drive does not change.
When you switch the project from absolute to relative paths, Tropy will update all paths accordingly. Therefore it is really important that paths are correct in the moment where you make the switch. If you changed the path preference while Tropy can’t resolve the paths they won’t be re-written correctly. If this is what happened it should probably still be easy to fix the paths quickly, but it would be best if you could send us a link to the file so we can take a look at it.
If you switched the project to relative paths some time ago while everything was still working then it should be much easier. If I understand you correctly, you copy your project to a backup folder from time to time and for some reason you opened the backup instead of the main file? In this case you should just be able to open the actual project file and everything should be back to normal. However, if you already continued working on the backup file and don’t want to lose that work, you could also copy the backup file back to the original folder and then open it there – this way Tropy should be able to find all the photos which are currently missing, but you will have to consolidate the photos again which you recently changed.
Hi! The second option worked, I was able to move the backup project file to the correct location and I’m now consolidating the photos that I added in the last few months one by one. Thank you so much!
Hello, I am having the same problem–except that I did nothing to the folders or files that Tropy is creating its thumbnails from. I haven’t moved or changed anything, nor switched computers. Within two days of uploading files to Tropy, I started receiving the “Photo Not Found” error, and the batch consolidation of Tropy doesn’t fix the problem, even after I identify the photo’s original location.
Having gone through the fora, I can’t figure this out …
Could you post a log file when this happens again? That is, when you start Tropy and there’s one photo that shows up as ‘not found’; you then consolidate it and are prompted for the location. After all this, select Help -> Show log files from the menu and you should find the respective tropy.log file there which might be able to shed light on the issue.
Basically, if the photos have not moved or were renamed, the only reasons for this to happen that I can think of are permission issues or, if the files are stored on an external disk or network share, potential connectivity or syncing issues.
Hello–thank you for your quick reply. It happened again this morning, and I’ve copied the log file below … I don’t have the computer skills to make head or tail of it. To answer the rest of your question though, the files aren’t shared on an external disk or network share (I have a backup but I didn’t connect it to tropy). Thank you for your help!
Here is the log file:
{"level":40,"time":1676385122238,"type":"renderer","name":"project","stack":"TypeError: Failed to fetch\n at loadImageBitmap (file:///Applications/Tropy.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/res/workers/loader.js:4:24)\n at self.onmessage (file:///Applications/Tropy.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/res/workers/loader.js:25:15)","msg":"esper: failed loading file:///Users/arielevans/Desktop/primary%20sources%20-%20book%20copy/CCP%20March%202022%20import2/BoardMemberFiles_PattyCarroll_1981-87/F4_BoardCorrespondence_1985/IMG_8699.jpeg"}
{"level":40,"time":1676385123259,"type":"renderer","name":"project","stack":"Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, stat '/Users/arielevans/Desktop/primary sources - book copy/CCP March 2022 import2/BoardMemberFiles_PattyCarroll_1981-87/F4_BoardCorrespondence_1985/IMG_8699.jpeg'","msg":"failed to open photo /Users/arielevans/Desktop/primary sources - book copy/CCP March 2022 import2/BoardMemberFiles_PattyCarroll_1981-87/F4_BoardCorrespondence_1985/IMG_8699.jpeg"}
{"level":40,"time":1676385125931,"type":"renderer","name":"project","stack":"Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, stat '/Users/arielevans/Desktop/primary sources - book copy/CCP March 2022 import2/BoardMemberFiles_PattyCarroll_1981-87/F4_BoardCorrespondence_1985/IMG_8699.jpeg'","msg":"failed to open photo /Users/arielevans/Desktop/primary sources - book copy/CCP March 2022 import2/BoardMemberFiles_PattyCarroll_1981-87/F4_BoardCorrespondence_1985/IMG_8699.jpeg"}
/Users/arielevans/Desktop/primary sources - book copy/CCP March 2022 import2/BoardMemberFiles_PattyCarroll_1981-87/F4_BoardCorrespondence_1985/IMG_8699.jpeg
Are you certain that this file exists? For example, if you open Terminal.app an enter the following command to list the file properties, does that work:
ls -l "/Users/arielevans/Desktop/primary sources - book copy/CCP March 2022 import2/BoardMemberFiles_PattyCarroll_1981-87/F4_BoardCorrespondence_1985/IMG_8699.jpeg"
If this works, could you also check the extended file attributes like this:
xattr "/Users/arielevans/Desktop/primary sources - book copy/CCP March 2022 import2/BoardMemberFiles_PattyCarroll_1981-87/F4_BoardCorrespondence_1985/IMG_8699.jpeg"