Fitch Posted April 26, 2015 Report Share Posted April 26, 2015 First, perhaps most important, the fantastic news is that the information was recovered by reverting to the last version from yesterday. I officially LOVE that feature. Now to the problem: I decided I wanted to learn all I could about outlining so I opened the Storyist 3 User's Guide and got to the section on working with outlines on text sheets. I clicked on a text sheet, played with enabling and disabling outlining. I did that with some chapter folders and just generally clicked away trying to learn something. I discovered that somehow, my clicking had deleted the outlining for every text sheet I'd played with. Is this normal? I loaded the previous version and everything was there. (Resume regular respiration and heart rate.) I'm going to rename the file, save it again and see if I can duplicate the deletion but I don't know enough about the program to know what I did that might have caused it. When I tried to save it with a new name I got an interminable rotating color wheel. Trust me on this, that wheel doesn't grow on the user with time. I can say that with certainty because i went up to breakfast, it was still spinning, to the barn and fed the horses, it was still spinning. Storyist wouldn't quit. I did get a force quit option and took it. Edited to add, Storyist seems to have lost it's mind. I tried to restore a previous file, browsed the versions, selected one and now it won't do anything. Won't save, won't delete, won't quit, nothing. I can't even figure out how to get it to force quit. I may have to turn the power off. It's never done this before. After trying everything and being told by the Mac OS that I couldn't shut down because Storyist was blocking it, I finally pulled the plug. Literally. I hate to do that to a computer but I had no choice. When the computer rebooted, storyist was still there, but I was able quit which finally gave me the option to save the file. Whew. This morning has been a struggle. I think I'll go get some coffee. You folks are probably out until tomorrow (good for you). It's working again. Enjoy the Sunday. The problem will still be here tomorrow. I don't think I'm going to experiment with outlining anymore until I understand what happened. I think I'll quite everything and reboot the computer just to make sure it's off to a fresh start. Can't hurt ... I hope. Fitch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cliophoto Posted April 26, 2015 Report Share Posted April 26, 2015 Hello Fitch I can suggest is next time you want to start playing around and learning Outlining is to start a new blank project. That way you have less heartache if there is a problem renaming and saving will work as well like you suggested. Not sure why there was a problem trying to save the renamed file but have to guess that either Storyist or your computer got confused about something. I know this is sort of obvious but it makes life much easier if there is problems. Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nen1000 Posted April 26, 2015 Report Share Posted April 26, 2015 Can't help on the specific problem, but it certainly worth a reboot of the machine, a clean (new) storyist file, and see if repeats the problem. If not them it was either OS-related or specific to the project file. I had a problem with a comment I added and couldn't delete, and it played merry hell with Storyist then not saving edits. That taught me not to play around with features in a file holding a large amount of my writing!! I managed to get rid of it the end, but my advice is to make sure there's always a backup (preferably multiple). Oh, and if you're new to macs (I switched from Windows only a few years ago) CMD-ALT-ESC will bring up the option to force quit any frozen software (think CTRL-ALT-DEL in Windows). -Nick (PS, for anyone reading this and thinking Storyist is going to eat your text, in the above scenario I lost very little once I realised what it was doing, and I lost more text by trying to write/edit on multiple devices without properly keeping them in sync - now no longer a problem thanks to auto-syncing) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fitch Posted April 26, 2015 Author Report Share Posted April 26, 2015 Can't help on the specific problem, but it certainly worth a reboot of the machine, a clean (new) storyist file, and see if repeats the problem. If not them it was either OS-related or specific to the project file. I had a problem with a comment I added and couldn't delete, and it played merry hell with Storyist then not saving edits. That taught me not to play around with features in a file holding a large amount of my writing!! I managed to get rid of it the end, but my advice is to make sure there's always a backup (preferably multiple). Oh, and if you're new to macs (I switched from Windows only a few years ago) CMD-ALT-ESC will bring up the option to force quit any frozen software (think CTRL-ALT-DEL in Windows). -Nick (PS, for anyone reading this and thinking Storyist is going to eat your text, in the above scenario I lost very little once I realised what it was doing, and I lost more text by trying to write/edit on multiple devices without properly keeping them in sync - now no longer a problem thanks to auto-syncing) Hi Nick, Thanks. I'm definitely new to Macs (two weeks this coming Monday). I still have two PC's active. The CMD+Alt+Esc equivalence to Ctrl+Alt+Del is good to know. I rebooted a second time after I got things cleaned up. It's been fine since. That said, I confess to aberrations in pulse and respiration every time that confounded color wheel starts rotating on the screen. Storyist does that to me every now and then. It goes away after a few minutes, but it's really annoying and I've no clue how to avoid it. I didn't lose any data. Fitch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marguerite Posted April 27, 2015 Report Share Posted April 27, 2015 Autosave settings? Just a guess. Storyist now creates versions on the fly to keep you from losing work. That may cause a temporary slowdown (spinning beachball). The longer spinning incident sounds like a crash. Steve would like to hear about that, I expect. If it happens again, e-mail bugs @ storyist.com with all the details you can provide. It will help him figure out what went wrong. Best, M Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fitch Posted April 28, 2015 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2015 This morning, when I was working through the project view of my old 'wrong' Scrivener multi-file import typing in chapter numbers, I got the Rotating Beach Ball (RBB). It came out of nowhere. I thought it might stop. After five minutes I decided to give it some time to see what would happen because my wife called out that breakfast was ready. I don't know how long it lasted. It was still spinning after breakfast but it had stopped by the time we got back from feeding the horses. So it lasted more than ten minutes but less than 75 minutes. I'm beginning to regard the RBB much the same as the infamous Blue Screen of Death that infuriates PC users. The problem might be the file structure in that Storyist file - it's the bazillion file Scrivener Import. I'll see if it happens again with my new, only slightly un-orthodox, single text file document structure. Fitch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted May 1, 2015 Report Share Posted May 1, 2015 Hi Fitch, I would be interested in knowing more about the spinning beach ball. It would be helpful to know what kind of Mac you're using and how much memory it has. The spinning beach ball is usually caused by some other process on your Mac using too much computer time. This could be a service like Photos (new in 10.10.3) uploading your images to iCloud for the first time, or the OS temporarily moving application data from limited memory to disk to make room for another application. Also, a number of Yosemite users (who are not Storyist users) have reported spinning beach ball issues. Do any of these situations sounds familiar? -Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fitch Posted May 1, 2015 Author Report Share Posted May 1, 2015 Hi Fitch, I would be interested in knowing more about the spinning beach ball. It would be helpful to know what kind of Mac you're using and how much memory it has. The spinning beach ball is usually caused by some other process on your Mac using too much computer time. This could be a service like Photos (new in 10.10.3) uploading your images to iCloud for the first time, or the OS temporarily moving application data from limited memory to disk to make room for another application. Also, a number of Yosemite users (who are not Storyist users) have reported spinning beach ball issues. Do any of these situations sounds familiar? -Steve Hi Steve, It's a brand new (three weeks ago) iMac 5K, 24Gb RAM, It's running the latest update of the operating system, 10.10.3. I don't have any images on the iCloud. There were only two other apps open at the time, mail and messages. As an experiment, after I installed the RAM, I went to Finder, selected every application on the machine and had them open simultaneously. Then I started Parallels and opened a couple of Windows apps. It ran fine. It took about forever to get all the apps closed again. Parallels was not running either time I had the extended beachball experience. I thought I had a crash once, but probably I didn't wait long enough for the beachball to stop. It hasn't happened since I did the upgrade to the most recent version, but I've also changed the file structure radically as well - to one text file from like 40 after the original import from Scrivener. Fitch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fitch Posted May 1, 2015 Author Report Share Posted May 1, 2015 I took a look at the link about the SBB problems. If it makes a difference, the last two of the three times I had the problem, I could use other applications. If I moved the cursor off Storyist, it went back to pointer. I could use mail, or MS-Office applications (I didn't try any others). I haven't done anything with regard to sound. I have installed very few apps that didn't come with the computer. Scrivener for Mac trial version (I had Scrivener on my PC), Storyist, Aeon Timeline, Microsoft Office for Mac (WORD, EXCEL, and PowerPoint), Parallels, and one Windows application, WriteWay Professional (which works great in a Parallels virtual machine). I also installed Norton 360 in the Windows virtual machine. I didn't trust Windows with WEB access and no anti-virus software. Fitch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted May 1, 2015 Report Share Posted May 1, 2015 Hi Fitch, OK, the next time it happens, open Activity Monitor (it's in /Applications/Utilities) and take a screenshot. It should look something like this: It would be interesting to see the values for the CPU, Memory, Disk, and Network tabs. This will give us a better idea of where the time is being spent. Clicking on the "% CPU" heading will sort the apps by how much CPU they are using, and the "System" and "User" fields at the bottom will show whether the majority of the time is spent in the system or the app. -Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fitch Posted May 2, 2015 Author Report Share Posted May 2, 2015 Hi Fitch, OK, the next time it happens, open Activity Monitor (it's in /Applications/Utilities) and take a screenshot. It should look something like this: ActivityMonitor.png It would be interesting to see the values for the CPU, Memory, Disk, and Network tabs. This will give us a better idea of where the time is being spent. Clicking on the "% CPU" heading will sort the apps by how much CPU they are using, and the "System" and "User" fields at the bottom will show whether the majority of the time is spent in the system or the app. -Steve Hi Steve, I'll do that. I just went and found "Activities Monitor." After playing with it a bit it looks a lot like the Apple version of Windows Task Monitor. I'll get a screen shot of it for you next time the SBB happens. I just learned that parallels and Windows 7 don't use much of the CPU. Neither does Storyist. The machine is on vacation most of the time. Fitch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nen1000 Posted May 2, 2015 Report Share Posted May 2, 2015 Hi Steve, I'll do that. I just went and found "Activities Monitor." After playing with it a bit it looks a lot like the Apple version of Windows Task Monitor. I'll get a screen shot of it for you next time the SBB happens. I just learned that parallels and Windows 7 don't use much of the CPU. Neither does Storyist. The machine is on vacation most of the time. Fitch Np "print screen" button on a Mac keyboard. You might find this page useful (lots of others if you do a google search): http://www.wikihow.com/Take-a-Screenshot-in-Mac-OS-X Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fitch Posted May 2, 2015 Author Report Share Posted May 2, 2015 Np "print screen" button on a Mac keyboard. You might find this page useful (lots of others if you do a google search): http://www.wikihow.com/Take-a-Screenshot-in-Mac-OS-X Hi nen1000, Thanks! Very helpful. I started a 3x5 card of useful commands. That's now on it. Fitch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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