Cannot save my project

[Michelle Nicholson]

Hi,

I'm using Merlin 2.7.6 on a Mac (Mac OS X), and when I hit save for my
project the 'save message' reads: "The document “WebSurvey Scheduler”
could not be saved". When I try to 'save as' the 'saving' message
continually spins. I've read some suggestions on this site, and tried
exporting the project as a xml file, however the 'exporting' message
continually spins. I'm not really getting anywhere.

I've tried re-installing the program but it continues to happen.

Any suggestions?

Thanks, Michelle

[Adam McNichol]

I am also getting this problem - and have done since I first got
Merlin a few years ago. It's just not stable it seems.

I am doing lots of work, with auto save on, yet when it comes to
saving when I want to, the spinner comes up and force quit says that
the program is not responding. If I do force quit then the save
reverts to the last manual save.

It happens a LOT and so must be a fundamental part of the application
- simply suggesting saving to other formats is not good enough an
answer as the application often stops functioning all together. This
is a basic application function.

I would appreciate a very good answer from Project Wizards as this is
far too major an issue not have been resolved after so many updates.

Cheers,

Adam

[Antoni]

Hello Adam,

This issue is really rare, but annoying. The problem is related to the
filesystem in Mac OS X and the saving in network volumes. Please send
the support profile and also provide the Merlin Support Team with the
information if you can reproduce the issue with other project files
and where do you save your project file. Is it located on your local
hard drive or on a network volume?

Thanks.

Greetings
Antoni

[summersault]

Its not that rare we have the same problem and had the same advice
about saving out to xml but this is often not possible due to the hang
as described above.

[Evangelia Stamatopoulou]

Hi there,

in general saving problems maybe connected not only to the application saving but also to the file system and medium used...Is the location where the file should be saved onto a local location and always available to the system? Are there any antivirus checks or indexing actions locking the file just saved? Is the folder write protected? Are there settings according to which Merlin should export and sync iCal calendars when saving the file? Is it a timing problem?Is the problem occurring only when editing a specific file? Taking some specific actions? Etc...
So... to make a long story short... I think in such cases is better to send an email with complete information to Merlin's support describing the configuration and the last actions taken.

Best regards, Vicky
(on summer holidays)

-------- Original-Nachricht --------
> Datum: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:17:30 -0700 (PDT)
> Von: summersault <michael...@summersault.co.uk>
> An: Merlin2Users <merlin...@googlegroups.com>
> Betreff: {Merlin2Users} Re: Cannot save my project

> Its not that rare we have the same problem and had the same advice
> about saving out to xml but this is often not possible due to the hang
> as described above.
>

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[Adam McNichol]

Hello,

I simply don't buy that this issue is either "rare" or due to the
native file structure of a Mac. I've had this issue on 5 different
computers at three companies. I am an advocate of Merlin, but this is
such a crucial and core issue that I am genuinely surprised that it
has not been addressed in a major kernel update.

In my experience the issue of not saving and hanging during display of
"Saving Project" overlay can occur when:

Merlin has been open for a protracted period
Merlin has been been kept open when the computer has been put to
sleep, usually by closing the laptop.
Merlin has multiple projects open
Merlin has been open when the laptop is transferred from a hard
connection to a wireless one, and visa versa.

To be clear this is not an issue just for macbooks, as I've had it
occur on a iMac as well. All have used the latest version of OSX and
also Merlin.All file servers have open permissions.

As most companies use a file server for storage of files and don't
advocate saving work files locally, especially for those who work on a
laptop, then if the issue lies with Merlin not being able to deal with
server connections, interrupted or otherwise, is quite serious. I
can't see widespread adoption of Merlin if this is the case.

This issue occurs extremely regularly, usually several times a week
and so is extremely frustrating.

This is not an issue that can be worked around, as mentioned in the
previous posts, and is something that needs sorting out.

Cheers,

Adam

On Jul 31, 1:23 pm, "Evangelia Stamatopoulou" <es...@gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> in general saving problems maybe connected not only to the application saving but also to the file system and medium used...Is the location where the file should be saved onto a local location and always available to the system? Are there any antivirus checks or indexing actions locking the file just saved? Is the folder write protected? Are there settings according to which Merlin should export and sync iCal calendars when saving the file? Is it a timing problem?Is the problem occurring only when editing a specific file? Taking some specific actions? Etc...
> So...   to make a long story short... I think in such cases is better to send an email with complete information to Merlin's support describing the configuration and the last actions taken.
>
> Best regards, Vicky
> (on summer holidays)
>
> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
>
> > Datum: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:17:30 -0700 (PDT)

> > Von: summersault <michael.broo...@summersault.co.uk>
> > An: Merlin2Users <merlin...@googlegroups.com>
> > Betreff: {Merlin2Users} Re: Cannotsavemy project

[Adam McNichol]

Would really love an answer to my point.

It's 7.30pm and yet again Merlin has failed to save a project. This is
a MASSIVE issue for me and my work, and I am sure many more people
besides, especially looking at the number of scattered rants from
people on the forum.

[Vicky Stamatopoulou]

Hello Adam,

> Would really love an answer to my point.
>
> It's 7.30pm and yet again Merlin has failed to save a project. This is
> a MASSIVE issue for me and my work, and I am sure many more people
> besides, especially looking at the number of scattered rants from
> people on the forum.

I would recommend contacting Merlin support on this. You can send your support profile and test a current developer build.

Best regards, Vicky

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[Innocuous dust]

I sometime get this...

However, whilst appreciating there are always inconsistencies between networked data and local data, security or not, lets also recognise that networks drop packets every second of the day, its not a perfect world. I tend to save the file locally and then upload back to the networked server. The fewer connections that my critical data has to travel over whilst I'm in the middle of something I factor as important, the better. Some may refer to this as risk management.

If you are experiencing this regularly and it seems its causing you some pain (considering your intonation), I suggest you adapt. Be grateful that this is a known and I'm sure this issue will go away over time. Just for the record, I have always found Merlin support to be exceptional, its one of the reasons I have continued with this as my personal solution for PM - its not perfect - but then show me a piece of software that is.

I hope you get in contact with support as suggested by Vicky. Oh - and finally, I'm not connected to Project Wizards or the dev team in any way. Im just a satisfied user in charge of a PM team who I actively encourage to use whatever tools they feel comfortable with to make it happen. Working out the common exchange format and agreeing reporting standards with different clients was the testing bit ;)

Good luck and keep the focus.

[Mark]

I too used to get this but that was before I changed career paths. I used to do network admin for the Mac side for a large publisher. At the time we used Quark. Sometimes for some reason users would get this. We never got to the bottom of it. For all work (and only partly for this problem) we mandated working locally and saving back to the server when done for the day. It was just safer that way. Saving maybe 100 times a day meant very high exposure to file corruption for a multitude of reasons. If you save locally and copy to the server later you always have a sound file if the copy failed.

I have seen the issue since but very rarely and with other applications. Not with Merlin yet but then again I'd never open a file over the network, well not one I cared about anyway.

If you have the option don't open any file over the network but maybe you don't have the option for some reason?

cheers

Mark

[Dent John]

HI Adam,

I don't know if you got an response from Merlin support.

But just to put a 'network perspective' on things, a protracted period elapsing between saves (including perhaps sleep), or a significant network change occurring (changing between hard to wireless connection), are all causes for concern operationally.

The former is the perfect opportunity for all sorts of timeouts to cause the storage connection to become effectively dead and need to be re-established. The latter may have the same effect, but it more likely due to the local computer having changed its address, with the same need for re-establishing a connection.

I'm not suggesting the Merlin team should not address them – clearly if they are supported ways of using Merlin, then they should either work, period, or they should guide us as to the limits of their supported use. But there are certainly parts of your network use case that could cause an average software product difficulty. (It is difficult because I suspect Merlin – or rather Core Data – keeps the file 'open', and reconnecting a failed connection with an open file relationship is not often transparent to the application, even though in Finder it may appear so.)

The obvious alternative is to use Merlin Server, rather than networked storage, as I don't believe it actually 'opens' the remote file. However, this is a cost option, and may, in fact, suffer from similar limitations, albeit for different reasons. I suspect it should at least be a little more tolerant of temporary network changes though.

If you don't actually need to collaborate with others on the projects, would Time Machine be able to give you the redundancy you want (i.e., save locally, but backup remotely)? There are also other – perhaps cloud based – backup options that could help if you're not keen on Time Machine.

denty.

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[Vicky Stamatopoulou]

Hi Adam,

I would recommend installing the latest update: Merlin 2.7.8
Best regards, Vicky

[Alex]

Hi all,

for information, I had a feedback from Merlin Support regarding this
issue and the advice is to export in XML format.
Then import your XML format in Merlin and the Merlin project you
couldn't save has been saved through the XML export.

Best regards,
Alex

On 30 nov, 12:38, Vicky Stamatopoulou <vi...@projectwizards.net>
wrote:

> > For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/merlin2users?hl=en.- Masquer le texte des messages précédents -
>
> - Afficher le texte des messages précédents -

[Joris Knetsch]

Just lost a days work on 2.7.9. Sent a rant e-mail to Project Wizards, I must admit I was working online. 

What I don't get, however, is why I'm not able to perform a save-as... even though I lost network (apparently) this would enable me to save my work in a different (or same, just overwrite) location.

I must say this is highly frustrating, especially because this particular instance the export function didn't work either (presented me with the spinning wheel of death....) Grrr....

[Vicky Stamatopoulou]

There are two ways to work with a file.
1- One would be to read it completely in the RAM and when ever need to read and edit an information to do while handling and accessing the complete file data. This is a good idea for small files, on computers with lots of free RAM. If all data are on the RAM you are free to choose where to do the next "save" or "save as" action. You DO have all file data.

2- Another way would be to read only as much you currently need for doing the next action. This is a good idea, if you have big files, not always that much memory and/or quick hard disks and reliable communication ways to the original file. This is the quicker approach to work with files and it is usually working good.

Both approaches are good and bad at the same time. First approach is slow for middle or big sized files. Second approach cannot do actions requiring access to the complete file data if communication to the original file is broken. Those actions can be "save", "save as" and "export"

If working in an unstable network, I would suggest you save your projects locally and use the server for archiving your backups.
Another idea would be to activate the autosave project setting so you can let Merlin do autosaves as often as possible so you don't need to redo much work in case of a network fail.

[Adam McNichol]

Have Project Wizards managed to provide a decent answer to why Merlin is unstable on saving? So far I've heard excuses and no real appreciation of the heart of the issue. To put it in it's simplest terms Merlin consistently fails to save correctly whereas no other applications have this issue. I expect Merlin to work, and don't expect to have to cater for "quirks" which render the frustratingly unstable.

I've yet again lost an entire plan, a whole mornings work.

[Vicky Stamatopoulou]

On Jan 10, 2012, at 11:48 AM, Adam McNichol wrote:

> Have Project Wizards managed to provide a decent answer to why Merlin is unstable on saving?

Please be assured, whenever the developers find reproducible cases, they provide fixes in maintenance updates. I would suggest you contact Merlin support and report your configuration. Hopefully there is a hint pointing to the reasons of the instability your report.

Best regards, Vicky

[Cadmium Atelier]

Hello everyone, I am fairly new to Merlin. I have only managed 3 projects with this software over one year. and I had the same problem happen to me for the first time a few days ago.  However i was able  to "save" my hour of work by creating a new project and copying the whole un-savable project, by selecting its first item, so everything it contained to the new one which i was able to save...... IT SAVED MY LIFE