Disappearing Tags

A very troubling behavior.

Latest OSX and EF.

Take a library with many tags, inside an encrypted sparseimage. Click on a tag to get the tagged records. Define a new tag that will be applied to some of those and apply the new tag.

Now decide to check your mail or do anything else that sends EF to the back.

Now come back to EF. All tags have been deleted. You can “undo” to recover them, but a subsequent undo takes them away again.

Other random records in the library have every tag erased!

By this means. I have lost untold effort.

I’m not seeing this behavior on my Mac. Could you provide a more specific series of steps? How are you defining and applying the new tag? Is there a difference if multiple records are selected rather than just one?

Well shucks. Now it isn’t happening. The only difference is that I did the recent test with a copy of the image. Could there have been a fragmentation issue? In any case, here are the steps:

Open password protected sparsebundle

Open the EF library therein of a couple thousand images, variously tagged with 20 tags.

Using the tag list at the left of the browser, select a common tag, say “Landscapes.”

Control click and make a new tag from source “Best Landscapes.”

Open the tag window.

Select all images in this new collection and uncheck “Best Landscapes.”

Now clicking back on the “Landscapes” tag on the left, go through the Landscapes images and selectively tag some “Best Landscapes” by checking that tag in the tag window. While you have the image open, adjust some other tags. Do about 20.

Bring mail to the front. Read a message. (Quickeys and Spellcatcher are involved.)

Go back to EF. All the images in the tag group have been deleted. Click Command-Z to get them back.

Now click “records” in the top left of the browser. Notice that a dozen or so images — not involved in “landscapes” have had all tags deleted.

I haven’t been able to reproduce this yet, but I imagine it’s a UI bug that’s unrelated to the particular contents of the library, whether it’s encrypted, etc.

If you’re able to make it happen again, please let me know. I will keep looking as well.

Resolved
It was a failing disk.

Thanks for the follow-up.

EagleFiler 1.5.1 fixes a bug that could (with certain kinds of multiple selections) cause tags to be removed when switching to another application.