Photos Lost

Tap Forms – Organizer Database App for Mac, iPhone, and iPad › Forums › Using Tap Forms › Photos Lost

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  • April 27, 2015 at 11:51 AM #13486

    Cameron Rex
    Participant

    I created a form with 5 photo fields. I used the form to collect information on about 44 different items with a varying number of photos. The photos show up in the app as a preview, but when tapping on the photo it brings up black screen. The photos also do not export, and I have been unable to find the photos anywhere. Please help, because this is essentially two days worth of inspection work out the window if the photos are lost.

    April 27, 2015 at 7:49 PM #13488

    Brendan
    Keymaster

    Hi Cameron,

    Did you switch on or off syncing at all? Tap Forms may be looking in a different location for your photos than where they actually are.

    April 27, 2015 at 7:49 PM #13489

    Brendan
    Keymaster

    Oh, and is this the Mac version or the iPhone or iPad version?

    April 27, 2015 at 8:37 PM #13490

    Cameron Rex
    Participant

    This is the iPhone version.

    Syncing was not on at the time. I tried switching it on to see if they would suddenly appear, but still nothing.

    It appears that the previews were created but the actual photos were never saved.

    April 27, 2015 at 8:43 PM #13491

    Cameron Rex
    Participant

    All the photos were taken on the 24th. It appears that an update took place on the 24th as well. Would the update have wiped out the photos?

    April 27, 2015 at 8:48 PM #13492

    Brendan
    Keymaster

    Hi Cameron,

    It shouldn’t have. There’s nothing in the code that would cause photos to wipeout like that. Could you plug into iTunes and using the File Sharing area, copy the Photos folder to your computer to see if the photos are inside there?

    April 29, 2015 at 7:09 AM #13509

    Cameron Rex
    Participant

    I have tried plugging in to find the photos folder. However, it did not exist. Going forward I am assuming the following 2 things: (1) the data was collected (pictures taken) before the 4/24 update. (2) the app subsequently updated after the data was collected. Given this, here is what currently exists:

    -There was no photos folder on the iphone or in iCloud for TapForms (at least, not one I have been able to find.
    -When exporting the CSV, no filename appears in the Photo fields.
    -When using the app, photos show up as previews, as they should, but when they are tapped I just get a black screen.
    -I have subsequently tested the app using the same form, by creating two more records with photos. The two test images showed up in a photos folder and the exported CSV shows the filenames, but the previously collected data still does not show the filenames and no photos.

    Based on this, I suspect one of two things occurred:
    -There was a bug in the previous version of the app that did not properly save the photos and the filenames in the CSV.
    OR
    -Somehow the updated caused the photos folder to be deleted and the related filenames to be deleted from the database.

    I am guessing it is very unlikely that I will be able to recover the original photos, though I am open to any suggestions as to where I may find them on my iPhone.

    However, the preview images do still showup in the form, thus I wonder is there anyway to extract the preview images? Where do I find them, or how can I extract them?

    Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

    April 29, 2015 at 6:03 PM #13513

    Brendan
    Keymaster

    Hi Cameron,

    You may be able to find them using a tool like iExplorer. You can find it here: http://www.macroplant.com/iexplorer

    From that software you can dig into the different folders within Tap Forms and see if you can find them there. I’m unaware of a bug that would cause the photos to not have been saved in the first place in the previous version. Nobody had reported that as a bug.

    Normally when photos mysteriously disappear, it’s because Tap Forms is looking in a different place for the photos than where they were originally stored.

    When you say you couldn’t find them in iCloud, where were you looking? They won’t show up in the main iCloud Drive folder in the Finder.

    But if you’re good with the Unix command line you can find them here:

    /Users/<your home folder>/Library/Mobile Documents/FXLPHZS84D~com~clickspace~tapforms/Documents/Photos

    Replace ‘‘ with your own home folder name.

    Hopefully you’ll be able to find them there.

    Thanks,

    Brendan

    April 29, 2015 at 6:03 PM #13514

    Brendan
    Keymaster

    By the way, that path is not wrapping around it seems, so it’s here:

    /Users/brendan/Library/Mobile Documents/FXLPHZS84D~com~clickspace~tapforms/Documents/Photos

    April 29, 2015 at 6:15 PM #13517

    Brendan
    Keymaster

    Also, you didn’t happen to have ever deleted Documents & Data did you in the iCloud Settings screen either on your Mac or on an iOS device? If so, then that would cause all the photos to be deleted.

    May 31, 2015 at 1:55 PM #13896

    thinkingcat
    Participant

    Hmmm.

    It seems my Tap Forms for Mac has done the same thing — thumbnails persist, but *all* of the photos for *all* of the forms have been deleted.

    I did not touch sync settings during the period in which this happened.

    It *seems* like Tap Forms is looking in the local directory on the machine (~Library/blahblahwoofwoof) for photos, even though I did tell it to stop sync’ing, and it still thinks it is sync’ing.

    But *all* of the photos in ~/Dropbox/Apps/Tap Forms Sync/Photos/ are gone. Except the one that was in the record I was working on at the moment.

    There were a lot of them. My whole use of Tap Forms sort of revolves around the photos.

    I am utterly at a loss as to how this might have happened — or how to prevent it from happening again.

    I am despondent about the possibility of recapturing them, even if I can find the files.

    If I do a search for all jpg files on my machine, I find some that claim to be lurking in Tap Forms Sync/Photos on iCloud drive — which is doubly odd because 1/ iCloud drive doesn’t admit there is such a folder, and I never, EVER enabled iCloud sync’ing for Tap Forms.

    I’m off to find a good stiff drink.

    May 31, 2015 at 11:01 PM #13898

    Brendan
    Keymaster

    Hi ThinkingCat,

    If you login to http://www.dropbox.com and click on the Events link on the left, you can see old versions of the folders and files in your Dropbox account. You can restore any deleted files from there.

    See the help document here about that:

    https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/296#event

    What do you mean by you told it to stop syncing and it still thinks it’s syncing? Is the Enable Sync checkmark off? If so, then it shouldn’t be syncing to Dropbox anymore.

    June 1, 2015 at 8:59 AM #13900

    thinkingcat
    Participant

    Thanks for the pointer — will definitely give that a whirl!

    Re. sync’ing — I misspoke. What I *intended* to write was that TF appears to be looking in the local file system for photos even though I did NOT stop sync’ing, and TF does still think it is sync’ing.

    June 1, 2015 at 9:27 AM #13901

    thinkingcat
    Participant

    Okay — restoring the photos from Dropbox seems to work (well, one worked, one didn’t seem to, but that may have been a challenge with lining up thumbnail and specific instance of photo).

    The downside is — each deletion was a separate event. There are approx 1,000 photos to individually restore. (I’m debating restoring from a filesystem backup from last Friday, which would have most of the photos, but don’t want to screw up pointers).

    Anyway, here’s something that you might find interesting: looking at the Dropbox event timeline, Dropbox believes Tap Forms asked to delete the Photos directory. I attach a screenshot.

    As clarified above — that does NOT align with anything I asked Tap Forms to do.

    Attachments:
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    June 1, 2015 at 11:53 AM #13903

    thinkingcat
    Participant

    This tool helped immensely: https://www.revisionsapp.com/ .

    Now the files are all restored in Dropbox. Only some of them are appearing where they ought to in the Tap Forms forms.

    There seem to be 152 (of the total 2,047) photos in ~/Library/com.tapforms.mac/Data/Documents/Photos directory — some of the ones restored in Dropbox have copied there.

    My question now is: should there be that local copy as well as the Dropbox copy?

    June 1, 2015 at 1:35 PM #13904

    Leo
    Participant

    Hi thinkingcat,

    yes, both copied are needed. The local is for use in TF. The one in Dropbox is the one needed for syncing.

    Leo

    June 2, 2015 at 1:29 PM #13912

    Brendan
    Keymaster

    Those photos in the ~/Library/com.tapforms.mac/Data/Documents/Photos directory should get populated from the Dropbox folder while the app is running. If not, just copy them from Dropbox into that folder. When you select a photo, Tap Forms stores it locally in that folder plus sends it to Dropbox. When your other devices see the file in Dropbox, they copy it to the local Photos folder.

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