Links are lost

[Carl Johnson]

I created a form with a file attachment field on my Mac using version 3.0.

I attached files to records and actually attached the file, I did not use Alias.
For a couple weeks I was able to open the attached files. But recently the links are gone from the forms even though the path can still be seen. For instance the list view I can see the file path like /Share/Attachments/FILENAME but in the form there is no way to open the file.

How can I reestablish the links in all the records?
Why did this happen?

I have hundreds of records with attached files so I hope there is an easy way to do this.

Thanks

[Brendan]

Hello Carl,

Did you disable iCloud sync perhaps and choose the Keep on iCloud only option? That’s the only way I would think the links could get broken.

Tap Forms looks for the files in one of two locations depending on whether or not iCloud sync is enabled.

With iCloud sync DISABLED, it looks here:

~/Library/Containers/com.tapforms.mac/Data/Documents/Share/Attachments

With iCloud sync ENABLED, it looks here:

~/Library/Mobile Documents/Tap Forms HD/Tap Forms HD/Share/Attachments

I have no idea why it’s in a “Tap Forms HD” folder. That’s just what Apple has called my iCloud container folder for some reason. This is on Yosemite. On Mavericks it shows with a different name.

You should check to see if your files are still there.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Carl Johnson]

Thank you Brendon.

YEs I have iCloud sync enabled but there is no directory under
~/Library/Mobile Documents/Tap Forms HD/Tap Forms HD/Share/Attachments

I do have a directory with all of the files in
~/Library/Containers/com.tapforms.mac/Data/Documents/Share/Attachments/

So there seems to be no way to copy the files into the Mobile Docs Directory so I turned off iCloud Sync and selected to keep all files on my computer. But the links still do not show up.

Any advice on how I can establish the links? Again all the files seem to be in the attachments directory.

Thanks for the help

[Brendan]

Hi Carl,

Well I’m sure you definitely have a folder like that. You won’t be able to get there without using the Finder’s Go to Folder menu command though.

If you see the file paths in the app, can you see if there’s a matching file that you can find on disk in that same path?

See the attached screenshot.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Carl Johnson]

Yes I have the directory but it looks like when I turned off iCloud sync the path name in the app was truncated to just the file name.

Before I disabled iCloud Sync the path was shown as I had put in my original post. So I may have messed it up when I just disabled Sync???

Here are some screen shots

Thanks

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Brendan]

Hi Carl,

It looks like you have your Drawing field set to have the multi-file setting turned on. But your attachments were created without that setting turned on. Try turning it off and then see if you can access your file attachments.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Carl Johnson]

Brilliant!!!! Yes that solved it!!!

Thank you. Yes I switched the setting after creating because I thought I might want to attached different revisions. But the is OK.

Thanks for your time in solving this issue!!!

[Brendan]

Hi Carl,

Ok that’s great. I know I need to fix that. The issue is that when you have multi-file enabled, Tap Forms stores all the attached files in a separate folder in the Attachments folder. I just need to move them into that folder for each record when you do that. The more complicated bit is if you turn that feature off, what do I do with all the multiple files you may have already attached? I couldn’t just move them and since there were multiple files and the control is expecting just one file in that format, what do I do? Just haven’t worked that out yet.

So it seems it wasn’t a sync issue after all.

Thanks,

Brendan

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