Submitted by WayneK on 2021/04/24 12:06

I'm stuck and frustrated by multiple, possibly interconnected, problems.  I'll just list them in random order and maybe someone can point me in the right direction.

How to create new file with same fields and grids?

I wanted to split off a topic into a new file that has the same fields and grids as the existing file.  So I used "save-as" to create the new file.  That gave me the new file I wanted but it was cluttered with items from the old file that I don't want in the new.

So I opened the Journal grid and started deleting items I don't want in the new file.  Figured it'd be a little tedious but it turned out far worse than that.  I have spent hours trying to delete a few thousand items and still am not done.  I select a few dozen items, hit ctrl-D, then have to wait 5-20 minutes for the items to delete.  No idea why it takes so long to delete items but it makes this method unusable.

How else can I do this in a way that's not so time-consuming?

Duplicate Items

As I deleted the unwanted items, I found that many items had been duplicated multiple times and I don't know why or how.  Some have 50+ dupes.

1) All of these were links to webpages with the link in the item column.

2) All were orphans (had no grid assignment other than Journal)

3) Went back to original file and found that the dupes were all orphaned even though search results showed them assigned to a grid.  So that clears up some of the mystery, though I still don't know why it created hundreds of orphaned dupes (same item content but different ID numbers).

Search

1) I enter a word in the search box, hit return and nothing happens.  I repeat this over and over with no response.  Then on the 3rd or 5th or 10th try it finally executes the search.  No idea why it won't work in the first place, nor why it finally does work after repeated tries.  Search has always worked this way for me.

2) Execute search; find item you're looking for; click on grid link.  It takes you to the item in the grid but it's hoisted.  Turn off hoist and you lose the item with focus going to the top item in the grid.  Frustrating.

3) Why can't we add columns to the search results?  Would be helpful for figuring out what's going on with the dupes.

Scratch Grid

Why is every item being assigned to the scratch grid even though Manage Grids shows no source for the scratch grid?  When I tried to open it, it showed the exact same number of items as the Journal grid (ie all items in the file).  How do I make it stop assigning items to this grid?  Why is there no field for the scratch grid?  Why doesn't the properties pane show the items being assigned to the scratch grid?  Could not find anything in the manual on this.

OK, the above was mostly a vent.    No need to address every point but any offers of things to try would be welcome.  Thought it would be easy to create a new file but it has turned into a slog, much of it probably caused by my own ignorance.

Wayne

 

 

Comments

hi Wayne

> How to create new file with same fields and grids? [how to delete contents of the copy]

once you're a thousand percent sure you're working in the copied file:

Menu: Tools >Manage Database >Delete all items

(There's also a 'Delete all...' there -- not sure what all that deletes.)

Thanks, Tom.  That's good to know.

In this case, though, I don't want to delete everything.  I want to preserve the items in one grid.

Your method will work well once copy/paste gets fixed.  I can delete everything then copy over the items I want.  Right now, when you copy items, it only preserves the creation date for the top level, so you have to copy each outline level under each item separately.  Pierre said he would take a look at this in the future.

Wayne

Hi Wayne,

I'll address your issues in the coming days, but regarding deleting items, simply lock the grid items you want to keep and do Delete all items. Locked items are not deleted (unless you check that option in the dialog)

 

Hi Wayne,

I select a few dozen items, hit ctrl-D, then have to wait 5-20 minutes for the items to delete.  No idea why it takes so long to delete items but it makes this method unusable.

I know that delete can be a bit slow, but definitely not to that extent... What is the PC hardware ? How many grids were opened ?

I develop on a fairly slow computer (to ensure performance is good for all users) and deleting 50 items takes approx 5 seconds

Pierre_Admin
IQ Designer

 

New 1 TB SSD

I can't help but suspect this is related to Windows 10, which I upgraded to last October.  I think I've mentioned before that I get regular buffering when I try to access InfoQube files (happens with other programs, too, but more often with InfoQube).  When I click on an InfoQube Window, I get the spinning blue disk (buffering) for 15-30 seconds.  Never got that with Win 7.

This used to happen regularly with Windows 7 but only for OneNote files.

2) Execute search; find item you're looking for; click on grid link.  It takes you to the item in the grid but it's hoisted.  Turn off hoist and you lose the item with focus going to the top item in the grid.  Frustrating.

  • This keeps happening to me, too. I think it occurs when the item was created in a certain grid, so that this grid becomes the item's 'home'. Later, when it is no longer assigned to that grid / has a value for that field, this 'home' attribute will still pop up in the search and when you click the link to the grid, the item is sort of temporarily restored to the grid during the hoist but once you unhoist, focus is lost as the item is de-facto no longer in that grid. Does that make any sense, Pierre?

3) Why can't we add columns to the search results?  Would be helpful for figuring out what's going on with the dupes.

  • This becomes possible once you click the "Show items in the Search grid" button from live search... To be honest, though, I still haven't quite understood why IQ has both live search and a search grid or why the two can't or shouldn't be combined into one. I should probably RTFM at some point to find out!

 

  • As for deletion being slow, I think it may depend somewhat on the visual options for the grid, scroll settings etc. Might some options confound this problem? Maybe multi-delete could be made faster by skipping all or some of the refreshes of the grid's display until all (or the first x) of the selected items are deleted?

 

  1. re Hoist: This is exactly what happens. In v117Pre13, I fixed the shown in column to not show the Home when the item is not currently shown there. It should reduce the number of times this happens
  2. re Search grid: Live-Search is completely different from the Search grid (which is just a regular grid). It is not possible to merge the two, really
  3. re Delete: It should be improved in v117Pre13

Pierre

Hi Wayne,

Regarding Search, are you referring to Omnibox or Live-Search ?

Live-Search works every time here... Live-Search has an option (... button): Search as you type. Activate this and you don't need to hit enter

Perhaps provide a screenshot of the top of the form such as this one:

live

I don't understand what you're asking me to show.  Is this related to the search command not executing?

I use the search box in the toolbar that says "Omnibox Search".  I enter the search term in the box and hit return.  If it works, it shows the search results in the Live-Search grid.

The manual says you can use Omnibox search to execute a Live search, so I don't really understand the distinction between the search types.   I'm sure it's my own shortcoming but I've never been able to get a handle on searching to the point that it seems natural and intuitive.  It's always been a struggle for me and I don't use it much.

Twice tried to upload a screenshot of my window but both times it locked up Firefox when I tried to navigate to the file.

Wayne

Hi Wayne,

The Omnibox is a UI shortcut to open the live-search. So it's important to determine if the issue is with the Omnibox or with Live-Search and that explains my previous post.

So...

  1. If you use Live-Search, how is it working ?
  2. When you use Omnibox, as you type, do you see the dropdown with relevant matches ?
    ff
    If you do, and focus is not on the first line, you must use the cursor keys to highlight the first line

 

How do I ?