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Submitted by WayneK on 2016/05/20 20:44

As I was dragging a column to a new position in a grid, all my items suddenly disappeared (maybe 20 total). I don't have any filters applied.

I found one of the missing items using search and I see that it no longer is assigned to the "History" grid. What would cause all grid items to suddenly lose their assignments and disappear?

Wayne

Screenshot of empty grid:

Comments

Will try again. Last post disappeared.

While moving a column in a grid, all my items (approx. 20) suddenly disappeared. Did a search to locate one of the items and found that it was no longer assigned to the grid. What would cause all grid items to suddenly lose their assignments to a grid?

No filters were applied. I did a screenshot but I think that's what caused the post to disappear so I'll leave it out this time.

Wayne

I tried to reproduce the problem, but can't.

In a sample DB, I moved columns in the address book, and items kept their values.

Are there precise step we could try.

Otherwise, what could cause items to loose their "source field" (more exactly : loose data in the field used as source in the grid)? Many things, but user actions are involved.

The main reason:

Moving TLIs (inadvertently or not) to some subitems position in the same grid OR in another grid with the same source (but there's an option in grid management to prevent fields value from changing); in that case they would be shown under the parent, but not As TLIs in a flat view where only items meeting the source would show.

Then, also:

- checking/iunchecking a field (used as source) on a TLI with inheritance turned on, could have unsuspected effect if you're not careful, but I doubt it's your case.

- autoassigns you forgot about.

IQ geek

Windows 8.1

CPU: Intel i5 2.6ghz

A screenshot would still be of help.

Also a more exact description of what exactly you did (and how). There may be some detail in there that would help reproduce.

Screenshot:

Wayne

I've never used auto-assign. I was moving one of the columns to the left. I think I was clicking on the tool icon (bottom row, 2nd from left). That's what I usually do to move columns but since there are so few columns, I might have been dragging it. Can't remember for sure which I was doing. I know I wasn't doing anything else (no filtering, searching, moving items, assigning fields etc).

It's possible I clicked on the wrong tool icon but I don't see any adjacent ones that would cause the effect.

Thanks for the ideas. It's probably a non-reproducible event. I guess I'll have to pull up an old backup copy to figure out what items were lost from this grid.

The only way I know of to make this happen is to select all the items and uncheck the "History" field in the properties pane. I certainly didn't do that and even if I had, the items wouldn't disappear until I manually refreshed the grid, which I also didn't do.

Also: I didn't have any items selected, I don't believe, and am almost sure I didn't have ALL the items selected, so I don't think I moved TLI's to a subitem position.

Wayne

[quote=WayneK]

It's possible I clicked on the wrong tool icon but I don't see any adjacent ones that would cause the effect.

Thanks for the ideas. It's probably a non-reproducible event. I guess I'll have to pull up an old backup copy to figure out what items were lost from this grid.

Also: I didn't have any items selected, I don't believe, and am almost sure I didn't have ALL the items selected, so I don't think I moved TLI's to a subitem position.

Wayne

[/quote]

No need to pull a back up if you know when the problem happened.

You could probably use your "journal" grid, if you still have it, but I don't know your set up.

Otherwise, in any grid -- but better if it's a grid used for those kinds of ad hoc searches -- just write in the filter area of the source bar, but keeping the source empty (example):

itemmodified > #2016-05-21 11:32:00# AND itemmodified < #2016-05-21 11:33:00#

Replace the date/time values with what you need, of course. This will show you all items modified between the 2 date times.

Syntax needs to be exact !

IQ geek

Windows 8.1

CPU: Intel i5 2.6ghz

[quote=Armando]

No need to pull a back up if you know when the problem happened.

You could probably use your "journal" grid, if you still have it, but I don't know your set up.

Otherwise, in any grid -- but better if it's a grid used for those kinds of ad hoc searches -- just write in the filter area of the source bar, but keeping the source empty (example):

itemmodified > #2016-05-21 11:32:00# AND itemmodified < #2016-05-21 11:33:00#

Replace the date/time values with what you need, of course. This will show you all items modified between the 2 date times.

Syntax needs to be exact ![/quote]

Great idea!

you could also use the date toolbar, but it,s less convenient when you need to isolate a few items in a specific date time interval.

IQ geek

Windows 8.1

CPU: Intel i5 2.6ghz

I got sidetracked and finally got back to this. I pulled up the journal grid and sorted by the "ItemModified" date. None of the missing items show up as having been modified on the date they disappeared. I assume that if this doesn't find them then neither will the other date search method.

I pulled up a back up copy and quickly found the missing items. All of them were properly assigned to the "History" grid. All of them somehow became unassigned to this grid on 5/20/16 but none of them show up as being modified on this date. Their modified dates are from months ago.

How can an item be unassigned to a grid without this affecting the ItemModified field? Or does field assignment not count as a modification?

Wayne

I guess this idea is ruled out by the addition of the quote below:

could it be that it was the grid that got modified -- not the items?

Somehow the source got changed? That would explain the items not being modified.

Have you found the item in the problem file?

(note: they will have the same ID number as in your backup, so you should be able to find them that way.)

[quote=WayneK]

[/quote]

Tom,

Grid source hasn't changed. In any case, I verified that each missing item is no longer assigned to the History grid. So somehow the grid assignments were removed from all the items in the History grid.

Yes, I found all the items in the back up file, and consequently, in the current file.

I just verified that assigning/un-assigning an item to a grid DOES change the ItemModified field. So there are two unanswered questions:

1) How were the items removed from the grid?

2) How were they removed from the grid without changing the ItemModified date?

I think this is going to go down as a problem that can't be reproduced, so I'll just move on. I guess what's worrisome is thinking that this could happen where I wouldn't notice that items were removed from a grid. In my mind that reinforces the need for some kind of independent check system.

Wayne

[quote=WayneK]

How can an item be unassigned to a grid without this affecting the ItemModified field? Or does field assignment not count as a modification?

Wayne

[/quote]

~~Something is not clear to me. You said that you retrieved your items from the backup, but were you able to retrieve them/found them from/in your original file (not the backup)?~~

OK. I didn't see your other answer.

I don't know what happened in your specific case. There are not enough details for me to event try longer to reproduce it.

Bugs can of course always happen, but let me tell you that in 8-9 years no items ever lost data mysteriously in my DB, except for the HTML pane, about 7 years ago.

I used IQ for my PhD thesis and other very important matters, and I didn't loose data.

I'd say the only shaky area (data wise) are column equations, in certain cases.

IQ geek

Windows 8.1

CPU: Intel i5 2.6ghz

Yeah, I'm not saying the data was lost, just the field assignments were lost. I had no idea which items were assigned to that grid. Using journal didn't help because the removal from the grid wasn't logged as an item modification. It wasn't a hard fix. I pulled up an old version to see which items were assigned to the history grid. Then I found them in the Journal list of the current file and assigned them again to the grid.

Wayne

Hi All !

Back from a few days off... Very unusual indeed. I'll check under which circumstances are items modified that does not trigger an update to the ItemModified and report back.

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

Pierre, would it be feasible for you to implement a toolbar command within IQ that searches for "orphan" items and displays them in a grid, IF we define orphan items as items which have no values other than default values? Or maybe a button that does that and a few other predefined searches for finding certain types of items, items with no yes/no fields for example?

Whether due to a bug, or user error, being able to search every once in a while for such items would be incredibly useful and perhaps put users minds at ease that they have not misplaced anything.

Ideally a search would determine whether there are any items in the database that don't meet a criteria to show up in ANY grid, but I don't know if it would even be possible to write something that would do that?

[quote=David_H]

[/quote]

Good suggestion. I'll see how to add this. Most likely as a button on the live-search form, next to Favorites and Marked items

HTH !

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer