Unexpected Error: "Instance of "Tabulmage" not created" - RM9

RootsMagic
,
21

Yes it does - well at least it does on my computer!

22

Hi Rich My RM9 crashes after the tabulmage error so that I can’t start RM9. Does the program run after renaming the media folder and the main database? Are all the tools that you mention part of the RM9 program? I’d be very grateful for any more help you can offer.

23

Keith,

Sorry for the delayed response.

The manner in which I corrected the issue.

  1. rename the main database. This allows RM9 to start without a database.

  2. open the dB from inside of RM9

  3. under MEDIA tab choose dropdown for SEARCH AND REPLACE.
    a) Look for and replace all special characters. # , $ double… Commas double spaces parentheses ( ) { } ! *

  4. I use a Mac computer.
    In FINDER highlight all file names under the MEDIA directory.
    Choose RENAME from the FINDER File menu
    Now repeat 3 a) above to replace special characters in the names of files on the hard drive.
    You have now replaces SPECIALs inside of media portion of RM9 and replaced the characters on your computer.

  5. choose TOOLS menu and (at bottom of list) choose enhanced properties, RUN.
    Check under MEDIA on resulting report and work through any problems that MAY still exist.

A help may be to PUBLISH the Multimedia List report and look through it. I saved the report as CSV (Comma separated values) and used EXCEL to search for issues.
If using Excel, you can Google Find SPECIAL CHARACTERS in Excel.

Without knowing your operating system or your experience level, the above is a shot in the dark at helping.

Please, let me know if I can help further , or clarify.

Rich.holden@me.com

24

JULIE,
Sorry for the delayed response.

The manner in which I corrected the issue.

  1. rename the main database. This allows RM9 to start without a database.

  2. open the dB from inside of RM9

  3. under MEDIA tab choose dropdown for SEARCH AND REPLACE.
    a) Look for and replace all special characters. # , $ double… Commas double spaces parentheses ( ) { } ! *

  4. I use a Mac computer.
    In FINDER highlight all file names under the MEDIA directory.
    Choose RENAME from the FINDER File menu
    Now repeat 3 a) above to replace special characters in the names of files on the hard drive.
    You have now replaces SPECIALs inside of media portion of RM9 and replaced the characters on your computer.

  5. choose TOOLS menu and (at bottom of list) choose enhanced properties, RUN.
    Check under MEDIA on resulting report and work through any problems that MAY still exist.

A help may be to PUBLISH the Multimedia List report and look through it. I saved the report as CSV (Comma separated values) and used EXCEL to search for issues.
If using Excel, you can Google Find SPECIAL CHARACTERS in Excel.

Without knowing your operating system or your experience level, the above is a shot in the dark at helping.

Please, let me know if I can help further , or clarify.

Rich.holden@me.com

25

Rich

Thanks very much for all this extra information. I ran RM8 with a previous backup to identify where my media files were stored and then did a batch find and replace rename on those folders. I only replaced the special characters that I could see in the filenames and it seems to have worked so far. I can now run RM9 with my latest datafile and all my photos seem to be intact, but that only represents about a third of my media files and the remaining broken links weren’t fixed so there’s still work to do and your suggestions will help a lot.

I use a 2017 iMac running MacOS Ventura v13.3.1 and I’ve been using computers since 1971, although there’s always more to learn …

Keith

26

Keith, Unfortunately I have been given the ‘Opportuniy’ to re-visit the “Tablumage error”. My experience indicates Tabulmage is RM speak for table of images. Actually, there are only links to images. Thus, when you get Ancestry, including garbage files and partial downloads, you get bad images files.
You should carefully review ALL MEDIA from Ancestry in FINDER before proceeding with RM9.
First, clean all the files names by removing extra spaces and all Special Characters. Second, right click in Mac FINDER (similar to Windows Explorer) and Quick Action ‘Create PDF’ from finder. Finally, inside of RM9 change the media filename to correspond to the cleaned name and extension of PDF rather than JPG. This FIXES the problem.
Hopefully, this helps the next person researching the issue.

27

“TabuImage” error is not exclusively RMspeak but it may be exclusive to Macs. I think the “tabu” is a homonym for “taboo” meaning something along the lines of “forbidden”. You could be on the right track with your guidance on what to do.

Important to stress that the RM user needs to keep track of each original file path and name linked to their database if they proceed to change them so that the link record can be found in RM and updated.

28

Tom,
You are CORRECT.
Hope the info provided helps users!

RM Community is a great idea.
Amazing when people complain about 19th century pricing in the 21st century.
Hope they don’t find out what 21st century American politicians are doing to real prices.
Bet they think phonograph records and non-download software still sold.
It gives whiners a forum and solution providers a voice.

Thanks, again
Rich

Genealogy without patience is just record keeping.

29

I’ve been skeptical about the purported cause of the TabuImage errors.
If anyone with a Mac wants to do dome testing, I’d be interested in finding out what the “special” character is that breaks RM. I think RM support would also like to know. They’ve been pretty silent about this issue.
This thread had some character suggestions. Maybe a file could be renamed with one of the chars, one at a time.

30

RM Support has not been able to recreate the issue, even when given a backup with media.

31

Thanks for the update.