My info view has gone bad. I can the age and the fact, but the fact stretches across the page, hiding the date, place, source, and notes columns.
I reset the database, but all that did was return my default colors, fonts, etc. The info screen still looks the same.
Is there a simple way out of this?
It’s hard to know for sure without seeing a screen shot, but likely you can grab the right hand border of the left hand panel with the mouse and drag it to the left, back to where it belongs. There is no “reset” per se to deal deal with this kind of situation.
I got nothing. The details column is longer than the full window, and will not let me see anything.
Sorry, I meant to say that the DATE column is wider than the full window. I can read the data in the window on the right, but this is extremely troublesome. I just entered a substantial amount of data on the day this happened, and using the backup from the day before will lose all that.
Full-screen the Edit Person window. If that does not reveal the column dividers, drag the Edit Person window to the left as far as you can without losing it. Then drag its right boundary to the right as far as you can. Repeat until the column dividers are revealed.
Then drag the right divider of the date column to the left as far as you can. Drag the EP window right boundary to the left. Drag the EP window to the right. Repeat until you get the EP window resting inside the monitor screen and all columns back in view.
Which is the “Edit Person” window, and how do I “full-screen” it?
The window’s title bar (at the very top) has the words Edit Person in the upper left corner. Directly to the far right there is the X button (to close the window) and just to its left is the button with an empty square drawn on it. That is Maximize. After clicking that… the window fills your screen and that button you just clicked becomes two overlapping squares (return to previous size). These toggle the window size back and forth. It’s the same function(s) for every window in Microsoft Windows.
Okay, I just did not know the “Edit Person” window was called that, and found it. I ALWAYS have it at full screen. It was at full screen when the issue occurred.
It does nothing. No change. The data is obviously still there (I can see the live edit data), but I’m going to give up and start over, just create a new empty database copy the data over, and reset my defaults.
The previous reply was written more than an hour ago, but we lost power for 60 minutes, and it took a while to hit “reply”.
Yes, I saw “Edit Person” (in the fine print) right after sending the first message, and I always call it “maximize” – “full screen” threw me.
But in that time, I created a new database, copied a GEDCOM from the old one, copied it on, am checking to see if I lost anything noticeable, and will then go through and reset all my defaults.
I still do not know how it happened; that’s the scary part.
As it turns out, I CANNOT just start over. The GEDCOM lost all my saved groups and at least one important custom field upon which many of those groups were based.
PLEASE, is there any sort of Tech Support that can help this?
Visit the website and follow the instructions to open a chat. Support could request you to allow remote control so that they can do what I described.
https://www.rootsmagic.com/help/
It looks to me like the slider control highlighted by @kbens0n is dragged all the way to the right in your setup rather than as he has illustrated to the left.
left click and hold on the 4 vertical dots highlighted then drag them to the left to expand the Person view part of the dialog.
You posted this…
I sympathize with your difficulties. The Edit Person window is a mishmash of poorly executed layouts and controls for adjustment of that layout. I’m thinking I need to generate a separate rant / feature request post to this forum about them, soon.
Meanwhile, perhaps the best (in your circumstance & certainly the quickest) way to help You back on your way involves running Master Reset. It is available, while running RootsMagic with your database open onscreen… by pressing and holding Ctrl and Shift keys down, then tapping the U key (that’s Ctrl-Shift-U). It wipes out all things you’ve previously configured via the Settings tab view on the extreme bottom left menu. You would then need to set the program preferences and locations of folders that have your database(s), ETC. like you’ve done at least once before, BUT the program’s windows layouts will be defaulted back to usability. Your choice is continue to wrestle the columns and panes or start somewhat anew. No genealogy data is lost.
DO THIS FIRST
File>Backup
I’m another user, not Tech Support, but have delved under the hood of the RootsMagic database for many years. A vague recollection of what I had seen before in a table that I’ve rarely touched prompted me to look in again. Using SQLiteSpy, I’ve been able to both:
I’ve realised that the instructions I gave to you earlier about window maximising, sliding this and that, and, likewise, any one else’s such suggestions are doomed to failure because the Date column has been blown wider than the maximum width allowed for the Edit Person Window. It’s not possible to bring the Date column’s right-hand divider into view. I also tried a drag’n’drop to a new database which fixed that issue as did your GEDCOM transfer but also lost groups.
So here’s the repair:
UPDATE ConfigTable
SET DataRec=
CAST(
RegExp_Replace
(
DataRec,
'<EditPersonDateWidth>[^<]+</EditPersonDateWidth>',
'<EditPersonDateWidth>100</EditPersonDateWidth>' -- 100 for a new database
) AS BLOB
)
WHERE RecID=1
;
I’m not aware that Tech Support is into the nuts and bolts and would have to refer this to one of the two developers to apply to your database. If you are disinclined to do so yourself, DM me or one of the other able tinkerers you can find in the Forum at sqlitetoolsforrootsmagic.com to arrange to send your file for one of them to tweak.
:This is an amazing job of sleuthing by Tom. I confess I had guessed that the relevant data would have been stored in a file called RootsMagicUser.xml. But I looked there, and there wasn’t a parameter that dealt with column widths in the Edit Person screen. I quit digging at that point, but Tom kept on.
If my guess had been correct, that would have meant that the column widths in the Edit Person screen are program wide. But as Tom has reported, the column widths in the Edit Person screen are stored in the database which in turn means that the column widths in the Edit Person screen are specific to each database. That means that a master reset via Ctrl+Shift+U will only reset program level parameters rather than database level parameters. Indeed, a master reset can be run even when there are no databases open. Therefore a master reset will not fix this problem.
That still begs the question of how the column widths in the Edit Person screen became corrupted in the first place.
Well, actually, my test showed that any blown-out column that becomes extended rightward beyond the width of left two over/under panes -and- continues underneath the dual-panel divider/slider …causes this symptom and merely closing RootsMagic (9 in my case) then deleting the file:
C:\Users\kmb\AppData\Roaming\RootsMagic\Version 9\RootsMagicUser.xml
resets the parameters and re-enables a default layout for the Edit Person window. So, my guess was that Master Reset would do the same.
It’d be pretty bad if data in a database became basically unviewable unless the company or those with an SQL utility could “fix” it.
That was in the initial message. And Jerry had the same experience. So I replicated your procedure of deleting the RootsMagicUser.xml file and then restarted RM10. While it did restore many layout settings to their defaults, it did not for the Date column in the Edit Person window.
I daresay there are two other columns or field widths in that window that have their width parameters stored in the database, independently of that XML file. These are:
<EditPersEventWidth>100</EditPersEventWidth>
<EditPersonSourceWidth>250</EditPersonSourceWidth>.
Why these three are database-dependent is moot. Maybe there were some special use cases identified early on, such as needing the Date field for text instead of dates…
I think we can all agree with your closing sentence “It’d be pretty bad if…”.