D. Deer Posted July 21, 2022 Share Posted July 21, 2022 Has anyone else had their user notes corrupted? Mine have suddenly been scattered around and linked to various verses. They are broken up of several verses and are completely unusable. Any suggestions on how to address or correct this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristin Posted July 21, 2022 Share Posted July 21, 2022 Hi @D. Deer, I am so sorry to hear this. Yes, I had a very important note file become corrupted to the point of it becoming unusable. I had this problem with both a corrupted note file and highlight file. Tech support said the problem was that the files were too large. Apparently a note file or highlight file should not be more then 5MB and mine was 50MB. It is VERY easy to exceed 5MB, so I would suspect that is the issue. There are two types of corruption with notes that I have seen. The first is when it scrolls, it is like an old fashioned typewriter where the lines are being typed over each other. In such a case if you close the parallel and re-open it, it normally resolves it. (I still have this issue sometimes even with smaller note files). The second is more serious, and it is where the note has been replaced with symbols that resemble something like Wingdings and other odd languages. This did not resolve itself and those specific notes were just lost. There are just a few thoughts I have as far as what to do going forward. 1) If you use Time Machine or some other backup, I would go into it and get the most recent file which had not been corrupted. 2) With all notes (and highlights) it is a good idea to go into the documents of the Accordance file on your computer and periodically duplicate the note file. The duplication can serve as backup of sorts. 3) The only way I have been able to resolve the size of the file is to split it into smaller files, such as OT and NT or whatever. While there is a "merge note" function, there is no way to segregate them except to manually do so by copying and pasting, which is not practical, but I am not aware of another option. 4) This does not work if the file is too large, but up to a certain size you can select the whole note and export it somewhere else like Excel or Numbers as a backup. I am sorry I am not able to be more helpful. Kristin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D. Deer Posted July 21, 2022 Author Share Posted July 21, 2022 (edited) Thank you. I appreciate the advice. The advice to back up in Dropbox is a good one. I have had a couple of years worth of notes "redistributed" and broken up over a number of different verses. At first, their font appeared really large and then everything just scattered. It's the strangest thing. I have had the "wingding" corruption on a number of user tools that I just had to eliminate. I could live without the user tools. Losing the notes is pretty frustrating. Edited July 21, 2022 by D. Deer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dvdmoore08 Posted July 22, 2022 Share Posted July 22, 2022 Posted 21 hours ago "Hi @D. Deer, I am so sorry to hear this. Yes, I had a very important note file become corrupted to the point of it becoming unusable. I had this problem with both a corrupted note file and highlight file. Tech support said the problem was that the files were too large. Apparently a note file or highlight file should not be more then 5MB and mine was 50MB. It is VERY easy to exceed 5MB, so I would suspect that is the issue." Accordance might want to give their note files the capacity to write to disk and retrieve from there to keep the note file from running out of memory. Retrievable and securely kept notes are an important capacity for any Bible program. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R. Mansfield Posted July 22, 2022 Share Posted July 22, 2022 Not meaning to contradict @Tech Support, and maybe they can weigh in here, but I don't believe the limitations mentioned above are correct. My main Bible notes file is 32 mb, and I've been adding to it for years. I have had it get corrupted at least once and was able to retrieve a backup. My understanding has always been that Accordance files--our modules or user-created content--are limited to 2 GB. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dvdmoore08 Posted July 23, 2022 Share Posted July 23, 2022 11 hours ago, R. Mansfield said: Not meaning to contradict @Tech Support, and maybe they can weigh in here, but I don't believe the limitations mentioned above are correct. My main Bible notes file is 32 mb, and I've been adding to it for years. I have had it get corrupted at least once and was able to retrieve a backup. My understanding has always been that Accordance files--our modules or user-created content--are limited to 2 GB. That's good to know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristin Posted July 23, 2022 Share Posted July 23, 2022 Hi @R. Mansfield, If I am understanding correctly, my 50MB files do not explain the reason for the corrupted note and highlight files. Is there another theory I need to be mindful of? I have an insane amount of important research in Accordance and I really need to make sure it does not happen again. I am also intrigued to hear that I am not the only one who had notes turn into wingding looking symbols. Is there a logical explanation for that? Kristin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HansK Posted July 23, 2022 Share Posted July 23, 2022 I use Bible Software for many years and have all my notes in an external program (Devonthink). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TXCiclista Posted September 27, 2022 Share Posted September 27, 2022 I've recently run into crashing that appears related to a User notes file. After researching it on these forums (and working with tech support), the takeaway appears to be that the User Notes function of Accordance is not particularly reliable? It seems to me that this is a function that should be avoided if it's this easy to lost data. I've never encountered a program this unreliable with respect to user notes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristin Posted September 27, 2022 Share Posted September 27, 2022 Hi @TXCiclista, Unfortunately there have been a lot of users who have experienced User Note corruption. I have personally lost a tremendous amount of data after the "My Notes" and "My Highlights" got corrupted multiple times. I have never tagged @Mike Garrity, so I hope it is ok, but I am hoping that one of the things they do with Accordance 14 is address the stability of Notes and Highlights. I would mention that these are the two issues that people seem to be having a lot of issues with, as opposed to biblical texts. Aside from the corruption / stability issues, both the Highlights and Notes are extremely helpful, so I still use both, and then back up my work once a week to an external program like Numbers. Ideally I would be backing up my Notes every day, but is not realistic. I do use TimeMachine every day at least. The problem with the Highlights is that it just starts corrupting gradually, so you can be backing it up for awhile without knowing anything is wrong. As mentioned in another thread, it appears to be that the Highlights start writing over themselves or something, but I really don't know. I know Accordance is aware of the corruption happening with Highlights and Notes, so I am sure they are going to resolve this, but I don't know if it will be addressed in 14 or not. Kristin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cweber Posted September 27, 2022 Share Posted September 27, 2022 Hi @Kristin I have only just started to use highlighting, if the below image captures what you mean by this feature. I do recall your experiencing this issue and was hoping it was resolved for you. I am now inclined to remove the few highlights I have added and revert to the more laborious techniques as the last thing I want to experience are corruption issues all over again. Accordance is finally behaving for me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristin Posted September 28, 2022 Share Posted September 28, 2022 Hi @cweber, I have actually have several highlight files (and Notes files...) which have become corrupted, so I would for sure be aware of that as a possibility if you use them. Don't get too emotionally attached to them as I did. I hope the root issue causing the corruption is clear to the developers and it is able to be resolved, as stability is obviously crucial for any academic work. I personally still use them (and Notes), as despite the risk, they are both really helpful. Take care, Kristin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cweber Posted September 28, 2022 Share Posted September 28, 2022 On Windows 11 it appears that the highlights are saved into a file as follows: C:\Users\Colin\Documents\Accordance Files\Highlights\My Highlights.hlt Probably a good idea to backup this file and if it crashes delete it and copy the backup over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A. Smith Posted September 28, 2022 Share Posted September 28, 2022 I'm among those who have had multiple issues of corruption in highlight and user note files. I'm to the point now (as I've said elsewhere) that I have several redundant backups, including an macOS automation that simply copies the accordance folder to another location as a back up every day. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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