Upgrade from 7.6 to 10.2.1 Tasks mungup.

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ckmunoz
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Upgrade from 7.6 to 10.2.1 Tasks mungup.

Post by ckmunoz »

EPIM Pro as above, W7 Pro SP1, Intel CPU, hardware shouldn't matter otherwise.

Moving directly from 7.6 to 10.2.1, same machine, long history of stable upgrades, no issues, jumped directly from 7.6 to 10.2.1, program upgraded without incident, as did database in all modules,

- except for Tasks. EPIM set to open on Calendar, no prob with other modules except for Tasks. Comes up, but without displaying the subtree branches or the content of the notes - comments windows. Any effort to navigate up / down the tree locks up, whether with mouse or keyboard, have to kill the process.

Unpretentious database, 6+ MB total size, 204KB in Tasks, although some Tasks notes - comments text is heavily annotated with font features such as bold, underline, italic. The more heavily annotated Tasks branches have been sluggish to come up in the past, but "sluggish" is not "lockup".

Synchronizing to a new blank database has no effect, issue persists. Round trip export - import to .csv or .ics brings all data back in, except that both the Tasks tree structure and the font featuring of the Tasks notes / comments is lost, tree structure is then flat file. Export - import in .html takes me right back to Lockup City.

There's something untoward going on here in 10.2.1 on my machine with both Tasks tree structure and font features. What's up with this? It's possible that it's a W7 video driver issue, but if so, what's happened in EPIM between V7 & V10? I could try it under W8.1, W10, W11, but it should work under W7, which is at the moment my production machine. (We're not talking W2K, XP, Vista here, after all.)

??? - CKM
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Re: Upgrade from 7.6 to 10.2.1 Tasks mungup.

Post by admin »

That's likely an issue with the DB updating mechanisms. I'd recommend you to try updating gradually, from 7.6 to 8.0, then to 9.0 and only then to 10.2.1. You can get all the previous EPIM versions from here: https://essentialpim.zendesk.com/hc/en- ... ialPIM-Pro.
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ckmunoz
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Re: Upgrade from 7.6 to 10.2.1 Tasks mungup.

Post by ckmunoz »

Okay, I took your suggestion.

Conclusion: the Tasks module import broke somewhere between V9.0 & V9.10. Tasks was fine in my modest database in V7.66, V8.0, V8.66, V9.0,

- but fell on its face again in V9.10, so I didn't even make it back as far as V10. There were so many subversions of V9, with so many feature and bug updates, that at the moment I'm uninclined to test them all when I already know that I can't get back to V10.

Although of course I've been unable to make any editing changes to Tasks in V10.2.1, I have made changes under V10.2.1 in Calendar and Contacts. (None in Notes, and I don't use Mail or Passwords.) Since the V10 database of course won't open in V9, I have no going forward strategy now except possibly to try to export Calendar and Contacts out to a new V10 database, then import back into a V9 one, if that'll even work at all. (As I reported, exporting Tasks out of V10 back into V10 or any prior version accomplishes nothing, since they're already munged up.)

I don't know if I can run two different versions of EPIM on the same machine concurrently. But running V9 for Tasks and V10 for everything else would be a pain.

I'm mildly surprised that there've been no other reports of this, if that's in fact the case. Or perhaps by having a Tasks tree structure with branches -- not at all complex, really -- + font / typeface features in Task notes, that sets me as somewhat weird.

Quite some time ago I discovered that EPIM's font features are over-layered in a somewhat non-standard manner rather than streamed, since if one cuts 'n pasts italicized - bolded - underlined text from EPIM into another "fancy" text program, those attributes do not follow.

Any further suggestions - ? - CKM
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Re: Upgrade from 7.6 to 10.2.1 Tasks mungup.

Post by admin »

You can make a copy of your older DB, then open it with EPIM 7.6 and delete all the data exempt for tasks. Then forward it to us, will check what's causing the issue during the DB update process. Thanks.
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ckmunoz
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Re: Upgrade from 7.6 to 10.2.1 Tasks mungup.

Post by ckmunoz »

After futzing around some more I've confirmed that the inflection point at which Tasks goes bad is at V9.1. All is well up through V9.0, then when V9.1 or later touch it, game over, any effort to navigate within the Tasks tree = hard lockup.

I'd hoped to be able to Archive out the Calendar and Contacts, so that I wouldn't have to go through deleting everything by hand, but I hadn't yet discovered that using V10 of Archiver / DupeRemover pushes up both databases to V10 as well, so that I can't go back to V9 on either.

I've now found the V7.5 edition of Archiver on Zendesk, so after giving it a rest I'll take another run at it, then send to you as a PM attachment. Either that, or just send up the whole thing. Although I'm not one to obsess, there's some personal information in Tasks which I'd just as soon not have leak out into the wild if it can be avoided. - CKM
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Re: Upgrade from 7.6 to 10.2.1 Tasks mungup.

Post by admin »

You can get the legacy versions of EPIM Archiver/DupeRemover (including v 9) from here:
https://essentialpim.zendesk.com/hc/en- ... tlook-Sync
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ckmunoz
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Re: Upgrade from 7.6 to 10.2.1 Tasks mungup.

Post by ckmunoz »

Turns out that what I needed to "deploy" was not Archiver/DupeRemover at all, but rather Synchronizer, with the proper options set in Tools, and yes, the version consistent with the database itself lest one end up in a bad place.

At long last that has now been accomplished. Tasks only in a V7.66 database, runs fine up through V9.0, falls flat beyond that even with no other modules in the DB other than Tasks, with all its 7.66 / 9.0 tree and content in place.

As soon as I catch my breath I'll upload it to you in a PM.
ckmunoz
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Re: Upgrade from 7.6 to 10.2.1 Tasks mungup.

Post by ckmunoz »

News from the front:

Before sending over the Tasks module, I thought I'd better take out some of the more sensitive financial information. When I did that that overall size of Tasks dropped from 204kB to 74kB, and the problem went away in V10.

One particular task -- the one I truncated -- was quite large in size. Something has to have happened in the code for V9.1 and later which precludes loading either (i) a Tasks module over a certain size -- number of tasks remains the same, so likely is unrelated -- or (ii) a Tasks module which contains an individual task over a certain size. The task in question has a *lot* of italic / bold / strikeout / underline text in it, which may or may not be related.

So here we are: if I send over the .epim unedited, you'll see what I've been seeing in V9.1+. If however I take out the financials you'll wonder what the fuss has been about, since you won't see anything out of the ordinary. The developers should know what happened between V9.0 & V9.1 to cause this, even if it was an unintended byproduct of something else such as memory management changes in V9.1+, for instance.

I doubt that it would have made a hoot of difference had I upgraded in an orderly manner. V9.1 still would have shut me down with the Tasks module I have in this specific database.

Your thoughts - ? - CKM
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Re: Upgrade from 7.6 to 10.2.1 Tasks mungup.

Post by admin »

I'd suggest you to copy data from the affected corrupted tasks and move on further with the latest EPIM version. Thanks!
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ckmunoz
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Re: Upgrade from 7.6 to 10.2.1 Tasks mungup.

Post by ckmunoz »

What I'm dealing with here is an edge case situation, granted. But here's where I'm coming out, for the possible benefit of anyone confronted with a similar situation.

(Understood that there won't be any such person, but still.)

EPIM seems quite presentably capable for migrating from V7 up through V9.0 in all modules, at least when migrating through epim databases, no export - import. The Calendar and Contacts modules continue to migrate without incident up into V10; I can't say about Mail and Passwords, since I don't use them.

Then between V9.0 & V9.1 there's a species barrier / fault line / discontinuity of some kind in the code for both Tasks and Notes, one which affects both in multiple deleterious ways.

If the content size of any one Task Note exceeds some unstated limit, that module will import without objection along with all the others into a V10 database, but then when one goes into the Tasks module in V10, hard lockup, process thread kill required. Trimming the larger Tasks notes down to, again, some unknown size and then reimporting does work, but in all cases the subtask tree structure is flattened out such that all subtasks are promoted to top level ones, tree hierarchy lost.

And, most font attributes are stripped out as well, losing underline, italic, & strikeout, but not always bold. Export to HTML under V9.0 or lesser does preserve the attributes, but although one can see the attributed text in a web browser, there's no way to get it back into EPIM, since EPIM doesn't support HTML Import. Also, apparently the EPIM font attribute engine is an overlay rather than streaming, such that copy - paste into any other application program reduces to plain text as well.

Once the Tasks junkola was in a V10 .epim database I was able to clear it out only by one-way syncing out to an empty database, with deletion allow checked. Anything else with Synch V10 just locks up Synch, process thread kill again.

Notes migration seems to have its own problems beyond V9.0. Only the lowest branch of the rightmost tree migrates at all, the rest just disappear. Also, the content of Trash disappears after V9.0, and if one attempts to round-trip Calendar -- shouldn't be necessary, though -- through .ics, category color coding is lost.

I do have an EPIM Business license, but I can't think that there'd be anything different under it with respect to any of this.

So now I'm off to try running V10.2.1 & 9.0 on the same machine, concurrently, at least until I can get Tasks and Notes sorted. Then at least I can copy - paste between the two instances. EPIM is a good program, and I say that after having tried virtually all the others over the past howevermany years. ECCO Pro and Sidekick and Lotus Organizer are gone, MS Outlook is the only general purpose organizer of which I'm aware which compares.

Given Astonsoft's quality of support and response to incessant requests for additional features, I wouldn't think that a program price increase would be at all out of order.

Thanks, all, for reading. I wouldn't expect any new developments on this within V10. I usually post maybe once every five years or so if that, so this latest is an aberration. - CKM
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Re: Upgrade from 7.6 to 10.2.1 Tasks mungup.

Post by admin »

Thanks for sharing your story. I can only add that trying to export tasks and notes into an *.EPIM file and them importing it into EPIM 10.x might probably solve the migrating troubles you experienced.
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ckmunoz
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Re: Upgrade from 7.6 to 10.2.1 Tasks mungup.

Post by ckmunoz »

Thanks, Admin, for responding, and again with apologies for the delayed followup.

By now I've clearly linked the Tasks issue to a byte limit of unknown size in the Notes fields of Tasks. Whether intentionally or not, that limit applied first in V9.1, but not in 9.0. Import into a V10 .EPIM file goes just fine, with no objection at all during the process. However, it's a one way trap door: once in. V10 can't handle the Note content size and so locks up, process thread kill. Completely reproduceable.

Although I make no pretense of being a database programmer, I've seen this before over the years in other application settings.. Data fields come in of indeterminate size, but then when the fields are passed through to the data manipulation module, catatonia.

Since the .EPIM import doesn't work, the only pre-processing adaptation I know of is to manually trim all the "longer" notes down to a guesstimated "smaller" size before import. A kludge, one which still leaves the collapsed imported tree hierarchy flattened out, but I've more or less given up on that.

Which still leaves the failed Notes import of any but the leftmost branch unresolved beyond V9.0. That's not a choking issue, it's a content disappearing issue. Again, something happened with the code between V9.0 & V9.1 which broke that.

I'm not at all unused to being the only one to report such experiences, worldwide, and not just with your program. Given the modest price of EPIM I wouldn't expect all edge / corner cases to be addressed / resolved, nor would I expect every setting to be optionable. Really.

For the time being I'm running V10 & V9 in parallel, V9 for Tasks and Notes, V10 for Calendar and Contacts, and V.0 for Mail and Passwords. True, I can't then link between all modules, but that's not a show stopper for me, however much it might be for some number of other users. - CKM
ckmunoz
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Re: Upgrade from 7.6 to 10.2.1 Tasks mungup.

Post by ckmunoz »

A possible partial explanation for the flattened Tasks tree structure: I only ever use Consolidated view, neither Tree nor Plain. Possibly after trimming the large Task notes in V9, then importing into V10, the view defaulted to Plain. If so, I would've thought that the tree structure had been lost. For another day, that database is on another machine.

Separately, an oddity: as I recall it, tags were not supported until V8. In my Task notes I make frequent use of the crosshatch / pound / number / hashtag / hash / octothorpe symbol as a number sign. When I brought V7 notes ahead, all these note texts were interpreted as tags, even though they predated V8.

Since I make no use of tags, I didn't notice until earlier today that V9.0 has created a bucketload of them in my Task notes. I don't suppose that hurts anything particularly, since I can just delete them all, but I wonder if that may be contributing to the V10 import problem. (I don't expect so, but still.)

I see no way of turning tagging by crosshatch off. Not saying that there isn't one, just that I don't see it, at least not under V9. # is present on both my US & UK keyboards, so I really don't know what those who say that it isn't are on about. - CKM
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Re: Upgrade from 7.6 to 10.2.1 Tasks mungup.

Post by admin »

If you click on Tools->Options->General, there's the following option: "Do not create tags on #", which should have been enabled before the database conversion in order for the tags to not appear. If you enable it now, no new tags will be automatically created when a single hashtag symbol is used.
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Re: Upgrade from 7.6 to 10.2.1 Tasks mungup.

Post by ckmunoz »

Ahh, there it is, duly noted, thanks. As it happens I also have used ## and # # in notes text strings for other antecedent symbolic purposes. But that's on me, I'd say, so no expectation that anyone else should be doing something to address that.

That's just the way it goes in this business.
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