Navigating - directories and subdirectories

[rnmerchant]

Hi:

PSP user for many years. This is PSP 2022 Ultimate.

The Manage window, the Navigation pane, the computer tab. I show two items: "desktop", which when I click on the arrow shows the one folder on my desktop. However the second item: "This PC" which presumable should show everything else, I cannot open to show all the other folders. Clicking the arrow, the folder icon, and the This PC, single or double clicking, will only open one single directory (the last one / onlly one I was working on before.

Something must be configured wrong in that I cannot view the other folders. What have I done?

Richard

win10 up to date etc.

[rnmerchant]

Interesting - 600'odd reads but not a single response! Am I the only one to have this problem? Perhaps I should try Corel's product support (... ha ha, just a little joke).

richard

[LeviFiction]

I do not see this issue. Here is a screenshot, you can see for me it shows the exact same default folders and drives in the Manage Mode Computer Navigation as are found under "This PC" in File Explorer.

manageview.png

Have you tried resetting PSP?

[Ken Berry]

FWIW I get the same as Levi. To reset your PC close PSP. When reopening it, hold down the Shift key. You will be asked if you want to reset it. Say OK. Make sure, though, that you save any customized workspace before you do this. Otherwise any customization will be lost.

[LindaP57]

I just started using PSP 2022 and am having the same problem. Have you found a fix for it yet?

[JoeB]

I just started using PSP 2022 and am having the same problem. Have you found a fix for it yet?

The original post was approximately 6 months ago and, as you can see, there are only a couple of replies and neither of them have this problem. This would likely indicate that the issue is so rare that it must be system dependent in some way. That being the case, if hardly anyone has the issue then nobody except the two of you who have reported it would have any way of troubleshooting for a solution. Have you tried the reset as suggested earlier in this thread?

[LindaP57]

No, I haven't tried resetting. I know this was 6 months ago, but I was hoping the original poster would reply and say whether or not he found a solution.

[rnmerchant]

THis is the "original poster" and I regret to report that I have no specific solution. This is to say that while the problem appears to have gone away, I have absolutely no idea why.

I did not try resetting the workspaces. I should have done as I don't actually have a lot of customizations. The only one I have is to take out of my "file locations" any reference to Corel being in my \documents\ directory, and getting rid of that was simply a pain in the xxxx, so I didn't want to have to redo that.

Having said that, I've now figured out how to do so. I edit the registry directly to remove any reference to c:\documents\corel\ and change them to c:\program data\corel\ . I did ignore the many warnings about editing the registry - it seemed to me unlikely that this change would kill my PC. And in fact that technique is relatively easy, worked fine, and so next time I will use Ken's suggestion. I say "next time" because I'm sure it will recur: all of my Corel products seem to have recurring issues such as these.

So my apologies for not replying earlier.

Richard

[rnmerchant]

Further to this issue:

I have upgraded (foolish, I know) to PSP 2023 which had been working ok. However today my original problem reappeared - the Navigation - Computer pane not working properly.

I went to Preferences - General Program Preferences - and set the "Manage" screen to be the default screen rather than "Welcome". Shut down and restarted PSP and the Navigation pain is now working correctly. (that is not a typo!).

No explanation from me for this "malbehaviour".....

[rnmerchant]

Further Feb 2023 update.

Problem recurred. Very annoying.

Out of respect for Ken Berry's I did try the 'reset' - starting PSP with the 'shift' key held down. That did reset things as he noted - the initial workspace to the odd 'ultimate' screen, and the like. Reset this to the "complete" screen which is the useful one.

Unfortunately it not only reset the "workspace" but also (at least some of the other customizations such as) file locations - which is a real pain as I now need to go and reset all of those back to the useful settings.

I don't think I'll do that "nuclear" reset again but try other options such as my suggestion above. The 'nuclear' is a bit too nuclear for me! And I rather assume the problem will recur, inasmuch as it did for several versions of PSP and has never been explained.

Richard

[LeviFiction]

There are ways to decrease the effect of the "Nuclear" option. But the nuclear option is often required because it's usually some errant value that no one can find that's causing the problem. The Nuclear option resets everything getting rid of such oddities.

1) First back up your workspace File -> Workspaces -> Save. You can later load it back, this is best for palette and toolbar locations as well as keyboard shortcut customizations.
2) Use Backup Preferences Script -> https://forum.corel.com/viewtopic.php?t=56858 - This script will save your preferences to a file and can load them back
3) Use Backup File Locations Script -> https://forum.corel.com/viewtopic.php?t=63919 - This script will also backup and save your file locations to a file you can then use to load then back. This fully overwrites the current file locations with the ones in the backup file, it doesn't merge what's already there. So it's only meant to be used for something like restoring after a reset into the same original program on the same computer.

[rnmerchant]

Excellent!

Those will be very useful. Thanks very much for pointing them out.

Mostly I customize to remove the \documents\ folder from file locations - I don't want various program customizations in my personal documents location (there has been a discussion on others preferences on that in another forum post) and I have found that directly editing the registry (despite the dangers of doing that) works very well to change any such 'pointers' from \documents\.. to \ProgramData\... But the scripts will undoubtedly be much more elegant.

Best Richard