Is Manage Favorites Broken?

[jasonjac2]

How can I help you?

I have 2 machines where Manage Favorites is broken BUT I think it might be me not you :-).

I have a process where I maintain favorites on one machine and then every month I back them up and copy them into the install of the other couple of machines I have. This worked great, but the original seed machine died and the 2 machines I currently have them copied to - the favs works well, but the Manage Fav's has an empty listbox, i.e. no fav's in it.

I have no idea when this started as I have moved machines, updated the OneMore and only really noticed about a month ago.

So the Q is, does manage fav's work for most people and if it is just me, how best to remedy it..

I have about 30 entries in my favs and am on the latest version of OM.

Version 6.4.0 with OneNote 16.0.17628.20144
Actually, if I go into manage favs and hten OK I get:
See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at River.OneMoreAddIn.Settings.FavoritesSheet.CollectSettings()
at River.OneMoreAddIn.Settings.SettingsDialog.OK(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mevent)
at River.OneMoreAddIn.UI.MoreButton.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mevent)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.WndProc(Message& m)
at River.OneMoreAddIn.UI.MoreButton.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

THE FINE PRINT This is a hobby project that I started for myself. I'm happy to take requests and will promise to
consider each one carefully but offer no guarantees that I will ultimately agree to their
usefulness or have time to implement any of them. If OneNote offers a "close enough" work-around
then I will probably reject the request - you've been warned!

[stevencohn]

I've seen something like this before where a bad link in the favorites can break that dialog. Remember that Manage Favorites tries to validate each link upon loading. A bad link in this case might be due to the fact that different machines might generate different page or object IDs - something Microsoft got wrong in my opinion!

It should have logged the offending entry in the OneMore.log file. Do you see any log statements just above that exception?

There is a bunch of exception handling in there but, clearly, I need to beef it up even more!

[jasonjac2]

Actually, I was just being impatient it would appear. My 30 favorites take 30 plus seconds to render. This is the favourites file stolen from one of my other PC's and about 50 are yellow and 50 are grey (I can't remember which are down as broken links), BUT they all navigate fine. So my 2 x take aways:

• you don't get feedback that the settings | Favorites is still being built
• if you close the windows before it is build, you basically get the error above.

For You possible Fix: Ensure you are checking the list has been built before attempting to do whatever you are doing with the list once I hit OK.
For Me & you - what makes the favourites JSON file not portable. Those pages that are broken are in the same notbook as ones that are fine AND the pages haven't changed names.
For Me - rebuild my fav's from the ground up.

[jasonjac2]

Following on from this. I don't know why my Fav's got broken. When you click even the broken one it opens the correct page.... I will add a page back in and compare the old and new entry in favourites.
What is a bit of a pain is the process I have to go through to fix them:

• realise it is broken
• click it to goto the correct page
• add the page to favs
• go into settings to reorder them
• delete the old one

I guess i could just add them all in one go and then get "notepad" and edit the favorites file.

In the settings, it is a bit weird when you move the fav's around (vertically), something weird happens as the window scrolls. the one you are moving goes off the screen and the last item in the list also has a highlight.

[stevencohn]

Better row movement will be available in next release.