Hi !
I tried to open my project on tropy but it won’t open and I get this message :
{“msg”:“SQLITE_CORRUPT: database disk image is malformed”,“stack”:“Error: SQLITE_CORRUPT: database disk image is malformed”,“system”:“Windows_NT 10.0.19045 (x64)”,“time”:1715096397268,“version”:“1.16.2”}
What does it mean ?
Thank you
Does this happen every time you start Tropy or only for a specific project? In the latter case it means that your project database file has been damaged. In our experience this is related to an issue with backup/synced folders like OneDrive or similar services. Usually, it’s possible to restore the project file, but I can’t make any promises. If you share the tpy file with us (you can send a link here as a direct message), we’ll try to restore the database for you.
Only for a specific project. It makes sense because when I try to open it, it seems like Onedrive tries to delete the file on its own.
Thank you!
Yes, that’s it. Unfortunately the file is very badly damaged. We can restore it but there is a lot of data in there that would need to be re-associated by hand. For reference, I see around 573 items and 650 photos in the restored data. There are around 1,300 metadata values but around 1,000 of them are not associated correctly. I believe we could restore most of those I believe but it will take some effort. Do you have a backup of the file or is there a backup that OneDrive could restore? If there is a backup copy, this would certainly be the better alternative.
Oh I see. Thank you for looking into it. I’m not sure what you mean by a backup. Where would I be able to find it and is this something I was supposed to have done ? I’m not sure I did that … Also, what could have caused it ?
It’s difficult to say what exactly happened, but I’m assuming that OneDrive altered the file at the same time as Tropy was saving changes to it or something along those lines. Tropy uses SQLite to access the project file, which is known to be extremely robust, but it is not safe for other processes to alter the file at the same time.
OneDrive and similar backup solutions often keep a file history or a record of conflicted version if they detect sync conflicts. If you have enabled version history for your files, you might be able to restore a previous version by selecting the project file and consulting its history.
I looked into it but all versions seems to be the same « restored » version with around 650 photos. Would it be at all possible to restore it ?
I’d recommend using the restored previous version from Google Drive, but we can restore the damaged version for you to compare.
Here is the restored database file:
project.tpy (460 KB)
This file should open fine. It contains 650 photos in 573 items. Many of the metadata strings could not be re-associated automatically and are missing in this file. I checked the list of strings and it looks like all of them are dates and titles based on the file names (that is no data that was entered manually).
How can we make sure things like this don’t occur? I can’t seem to get OneDrive to sync between two windows devices without some issue like this occurring. I keep the whole folder backed up so I’ve been able to restore, but I keep losing my most recent changes. What is the proper way to use Tropy with OneDrive?
Thank you for the restored version. I was able to open it. It doesnt contain everything like before but it is something. I don’t have a previous version in Google drive though. When it happened, all versions everywhere cant be opened.
Just to make sure, is there no way to access the previous full version again ? I’m finishing up my master’s thesis (I was using tropy for it) and I would just like to know if I should just give up on that or still wait for it. If not, I’ll try to find another solution to sort my pictures out.
Thank you for your help, it’s really appreciated.
You can try to restore a previously saved version in your Google Drive – you most likely want to do this in the web interface, not on your local device.
I’m suddenly having a similar error, on a file saved to Dropbox:
{“msg”:“SQLITE_CORRUPT: database disk image is malformed”,“stack”:“Error: SQLITE_CORRUPT: database disk image is malformed”,“system”:“Darwin 23.6.0 (x64)”,“time”:1727377839122,“version”:“1.16.2”}
This was a new project, started about two weeks ago, which ran without issues until today, when I attempted to open it from a different computer–since then, I’ve gotten this error on this project on both computers.
Is there anything I can do to restore this project? It was new enough that I hadn’t backed it up yet!
Thank you.
When Dropbox creates sync conflicts it should make extra copies of the conflicting files, so you should be able to restore the working version of the file. I’d check on the computer where you worked on the file originally, to see if Dropbox saved the original version there.
If you can’t restore the file you can also send us the damaged file and we can try to restore the database contents. Even when restoring the database works, there’s always potential for data loss so if you can locate one of the conflicted versions saved by Dropbox that’s definitely to be preferred.
Thanks! The Dropbox restore did it, with only a few missing entries that were easily replicated.
Hello, I’m encountering a similar problem. When I try to open Tropy, I receive the following error: : SQLITE_CORRUPT: database disk image is malformed. Additionally, a .tpy file named project (# Edit conflict 2026‑01‑11 ygkCrMY #) has been created.
Is there any way to resolve this issue? Thanks in advance!
It looks like the project file was damaged due to a sync-conflict by the tool you’re using to backup or share the file or the folder. Typically this happens if you have the project open in Tropy while a sync happens.
The project file is a SQLite database file. If these files are damaged, we’re usually able to recover them, but even if this works you’d still have to verify all the data in the project to make sure it’s fine. So the better solution is reverting to the most recent version before the sync-conflict happened. Which tool are you using to backup the file and can you easily restore the previous version of it? If that’s not possible you can share the damaged file with us and we can take a look whether or not it can be restored.
It worked now! I didn’t realise that I was supposed to open the file “project (# Edit conflict 2026‑01‑11 ygkCrMY #)” that had been created in the Tropy folder.
It’s likely that your backup tool detected a sync conflict in saved the original file under that name – Tropy would not rename the file like this. I would be very careful and check if it really contains all data (changes after the 11th could be missing) – if it’s good you can fix the file name again. And I would also take this opportunity to save a backup copy, just in case this happens again.