Missing Born and Died in Index

I thought I’d done something wrong so I asked for advice/help and OMG have I stirred up a hornet’s nest. I am relieved that I am not alone and did nothing wrong so it’s up to RM to come up with the “Lazarus” update and bring back our dead. RM has a copy of my file to play with but all they need to do is create their own temp.file and play with the left right up down arrows, see the effect and resolve it.

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I’m not experiencing a problem revealing the hidden Born|Died columns until after reopening the file in which they were hidden. I followed @thejerrybryan video to hide them and, by simply moving the main divider to the left, they reappeared at initial widths. Tried at both full screen and partial screen. Could there be a complicating factor from screen scaling that others have or is it simply that once saved, the UI cannot get out.

I think the SideList…Width values are saved to the database only on closing, at least. When the columns are hidden, their values are zero. I found that reducing the window size or dragging it to a different monitor caused a reappearance, at the previously stored settings, if they were non-zero. The problem arises if the database is closed when the column widths are 0. Then there is no way to reveal them on reopening.

By closing the database and editing the XML values to non-zero, the columns reappeared when RM next opened the database.

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Could you please advise a non-tech guy how to edit the XML (whatever that is) as if that has solved the missing born/died columns then we can all sleep tonite.

As Tom has indicated, the SideListBirthWidth and SideListDeathWidth parameters that are getting set to zero are in the ConfigTable in the RM database. Those parameters are stored in the DataRec column in the Config table. The data actually is an XML string, but the string is stored in a database column rather than an an xml file. That means that they are not amenable to editing with a text editor as a way to recover from the problem.

Those parameters definitely are the problem. They only way to edit the parameters directly is with an SQLite script. I have done so in the last few minutes, and my fix works. But fixing the problem in that manner requires programming skills. When you grab and move the divider lines between the Born and Died columns, what you are doing is causing RM itself to change those parameters for you without you doing any programming because RM has done the programming for you. It’s just that it’s easy to break the columns so that you can’t fix it yourself from within RM.

I had been looking for the parameters in the RootsMagicUser.xml file which is a txt file which can be edited. The difference is that the parameters in the RootsMagicUser.xml are global or program settings which apply to all database. The parameters in the ConfigTable in the RM database are those parameters which are specific to the current database. That’s why when I broke the Born and Died columns in the sidebar Index, other databases were not affected and I could fix my little test database with one person just by deleting it and creating it again.

Edit added: I have not been able to get Tom’s technique to correct the problem from within RM to work. Perhaps the difference is something like screen size or font size or screen resolution or something like that. The only fix that actually works for me has been my SQLite script.

Any chance that you are going to put the script up on the sqliteforrootsmagic site?

I have posted my script, such as it is:
https://sqlitetoolsforrootsmagic.com/forum/topic/unhide-sidelist-borndied-columns-rm8/#postid-720

@thejerrybryan , feel free to add yours.

RM7 has no Died column in the SideList Index nor is the Born column adjustable in width. There is a control to show or hide it at a fixed width. RM8 replaced it with the two adjustable-width columns but no show/hide control. Allowing the width to be set to 0 seems to be the trap. Maybe if the minimum was 1 (or 10), they would be tantamount to being hidden yet the dividing lines could still be grabbed.

EDIT: I can confirm that if the width of the column is 1, it is ‘hidden’ but the width control remains accessible. While it might be an easy revision in code to disallow 0 width (and maybe not if it is a module from another party), the result is not an intuitive UI. Better would be that there is a higher minimum plus a show|hide control, either an expansion of the 3-dot menu above or perhaps a right-click on the column header to pop out a menu.

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Tom’s script is already up and is better than mine. It does basically the same thing. Mine only had the REPLACE (identical to Tom’s). Tom handled the BLOB issue correctly and I ignored the BLOB issue and it worked anyway. Tom only updated record #1 and I updated all the records that had the bad string because the table only has one row. In short, mine was quick and dirty and Tom’s was more professional.

I do wonder what the RM developers should do to prevent the problem. It seems like they shouldn’t allow the width of the columns to become zero pixels when we know that results in a situation that cannot be recovered. I tried setting the width of the columns to 1 pixel and I still couldn’t recover from it. At some point - 5 pixels or 10 pixels? - there surely would be enough pixels to be able recover. Surely you don’t have to go all the way to the default of 40 pixels to be able to recover.

…whereas I could. And if I hide the columns after a startup with them visible, I can unhide them whereas you (and maybe the OP and another poster) could not; that says something about other system settings having an effect on behavior.

I will have to play with this when I get back home later. I did a quick trial and it didn’t seem to update mine. My birth column didn’t shrink down to 40, and my death column did not appear. When looking at the XML for the two values, my birth value is already 40 and the death value is 1284.

I ran the query in SQLite Spy, so I probably did something wrong as I was in a hurry.

It is written to reset 0 to 40 and has no effect on non-zero values as you should be able to resize them (or is there another condition such as too large?).

Edit: Jerry says he cannot grab the divider with a width of 1 so a more general solution is in order - a reset from any width value, which would cover the too-wide case.

Ooops, my bad. I need to read scripts a little closer before running them in a hurry. Anyway, after I ran the script, I still did not have the ability to slide the Died column back into view. What I did was was alter the script a bit to shrink the Born column down from 1246 to 40. When I started RM8 back up, presto! Both columns were present for me. I didn’t even have to adjust them.

Edit: I probably should refer to SideListDeathWidth and SideListBirthWidth as those are the actual settings, but I assume you probably figure out I was referring to the RM columns. My oops, I shouldn’t hastily type things either.

If you are a non-tech guy, I would recommend that you stay far, far away from getting into settings files and changing values. As a former IT professional, I had to spend many hours trying to restore functionality to programs after users who thought they knew what they were doing got their meat hooks into settings files.

Aha, so the Born column can be dragged so wide that the Name column is hidden and cannot be unhidden if the database was closed in that state (and, possibly for some systems, even before closing).

I’ve also found that the SideList Birth|Death Widths can be decimal numbers. Here are the values from making the Born column as wide as I could as in the above image:
image

So I have revised the script to convert any decimal or integer value for the two widths back to 40 and here’s the result:


The main divider always remains visible (in my experience) and so the SideList can be narrowed to reveal the main view.

That would seem to be the case. The only column that I had was Born. I did close RM8 after shrinking the name column and did not notice until just before I ran the script the first time this morning. Now that we have figured out what is happening and how to fix it, I truly can’t believe that someone thinks that this is an acceptable option as per Renee’s previous statements.

Sorry Tom–I didn’t know there was no DIED in RM 7–I MISUNDERSTOOD --I thought by what was said you had more choices…

I may be wrong BUT I’m beginning to think that if you change the size of any of the columns ( other than the whole sidebar) that one or more will be gone when you open it back up–I messed around with one of my files BUT when I closed it, all 3 columns were showing-- when I opened it back up-- I was missing at least died…

Also want to ask what are the number columns on the left side of the name for-- I’ve seen 2 columns-- the farthest one has all zeros and the 2nd one by the name has all ones–just curious

Thanks

@nkess This was discussed in this posting. What are these hidden fields?
They are color codes and whether the name is primary or alternate.

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I was feeling sorry that I raised the problem of missing columns but now it seems that maybe I was right to do so. It seems to caused quite some angst and in some cases “temporary” loss of data as we all looked for a solution. I have little tech knowhow so couldn’t help but I now hope that what has been achieved will be looked into by RM. Their tech help told me that this issue had not been raised before and asked me for another copy of my database but I declined, advised them to read all your comments, solve the problem and send out an update. If in Excel you can hide/unhide/widen/“unwiden” colums/rows then the solution is there. I live in hope.

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@BOMOROB – no reason to feel sorry for bringing up the issue as it is something that needs to be addressed-- to everybody else, Thanks for you help–we appreciate it…

For those of us that are NOT computer savvy and don’t feel comfortable getting into settings files and changing values, there is another solution-- EXPORT your broken file as a GEDCOM and IMPORT the gedcom back into RM8-- and the problem will be fixed-- YES I do realize there MIGHT be some data loss by doing a gedcom BUT when you are dead in the water like BOMOROB because he lost name, born and died, a data loss is acceptable-- That said I experienced no data loss on mine and BOMOROB said he couldn’t see any data loss…