Lost formatting for images once moved

[sparkypoptart1]

Hi, I'm new to this forum and have a question.

I was trying to organize my folders in Flare, so I moved the images into the appropriate "Images" folder. Now, I have lost the formatting of those images. Is there any way to restore all images in my topics, or do I have to do it one by one?

Thanks
Julie

[LTinker68]

Welcome to the forums.

What do you mean you've lost the formatting for the images?

[Thomas Tregner]

If you used Capture to edit the images:
Using Windows Explorer, check the old folder for <image name>.<extension>.props files. You won't see these files in Flare's Content Explorer. These are XML files which store your original image and changes to it. If these are still there, you can copy these to the new folder.

[sparkypoptart1]

Thanks for the replies.

I don't have the Capture feature with Flare unfortunately. I used a combination of Windows Paint, SnagIt (whatever was available at the time) and now I use Fullshot v9.5. The images files are a combination of png, jpg, and gif.
Is there a way to globally undate the file designations, or do I need to edit and update the file paths for the images one by one?

Thanks again,
Julie

[svt-user]

It's still not clear what you mean.

Do you mean:

I moved a number of images between folders, and now Flare cannot find the images and displays a blank placeholder in each topic

Or:

I moved a number of images between folders, and file property edits that I applied to those images (such as display size) have vanished.


If the first case, Flare should have prompted you to confirm the file path updates associated with moving files and folders. The only way this can break is if you decline to update the path. (Unless you moved folders outside Flare - always a risky move.)

This means that the pointer in the source XHTML topic cannot find the figure.

In the XML code (text editor view) , the path to a figure is like this:

Code: Select all

<p style="text-align: center;">
            <img src="../Resources/Images/VM-Tab.png" style="height: auto;width: 6.25in;" />
        </p>

However, if you moved your figures consistently they might now live at:

Code: Select all

../Resources/Images/MyImages/*.png

Where /MyImages is the example of a new folder.


All you need to do is use Find and Replace in "Find in source code" mode to globally find and replace the root of the path.

For example:

Find and Replace option:

Code: Select all

Find What: <img src="../Resources/Images/

Find In: Whole project

Code: Select all

Replace with: <img src="../Resources/Images/MyImages/ 

Find in Source Code

Do a couple of find/replaces manually first, and make sure that

- You did not break the XML tagging

- The path replacement works. Look at the topic to ensure that it displays the correct image.

When you are confident, use Start and Replace All to globally replace the path.

If you moved figure files to different folders, you might need to repeat this operation for each broken path.

The View > Project Analysis > Broken Links option will help you track them down.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Second Case (although I've never seen that happen).

If the property edits are somehow missing, then you can apply changes to all the topic files, providing the values are consistent.

In the previous example, notice that the properties for each image are part of the <img> tag, such as:

Code: Select all

style="height: auto;width: 6.25in;" 

In my case, I have a consistent value of 6.25in, the measure of my PDF page layout, so I can use global Find and Replace to fix these.

First, determine what the <img> tag looks unstyled, such as:

<img src="../Resources/Images/VM-Tab.png"/>

Then pick one file and click F4 and apply all the properties that you want.

Save and open the same file in the XML text editor view and the <img> tag will now have the style properties:

<img src="../Resources/Images/VM-Tab.png" style="height: auto;width: 6.25in;" />

Next, invoke Find and Replace

Find and Replace option:

Code: Select all

Find What: <img src="../Resources/Images/VM-Tab.png"/>

Find In: Whole project

Code: Select all

Replace with: <<img src="../Resources/Images/VM-Tab.png" style="height: auto;width: 6.25in;" />

Find in Source Code

Again, test on one or two files before doing globally.

if you used different image properties, you will have to first identify the files in groups, such as all files that are 4.0 inches wide.

[svt-user]

Apologies, the second example is incorrect. It should be:



Next, invoke Find and Replace

Find and Replace option:

Find What:

Code: Select all

.png"/>

(where .png is whatever image format you use)

Find In: Whole project

Replace with:

Code: Select all

.png" style="height: auto;width: 6.25in;" />

Find in Source Code

Again, test on one or two files before doing globally.

if you used different image properties, you will have to first identify the files in groups, such as all files that are 4.0 inches wide.

[sparkypoptart1]

I moved a number of images between folders, and now Flare cannot find the images and displays a blank placeholder in each topic

I tried every scenario you mentioned below, but none have worked, images are still missing.

Thanks anyway,
Julie

[LTinker68]

I moved a number of images between folders, and now Flare cannot find the images and displays a blank placeholder in each topic

I tried every scenario you mentioned below, but none have worked, images are still missing.

1. What folder did you move the images to? Are you still in the Resources folder and still in the same project?
2. Did you move the images to a folder that has a condition tag on it that's excluded in the target?

[SteveS]

My guess is you moved the images in Windows Explorer? If you do, Flare will be looking for the images in the original folder.

You can move the images from within Flare, using the content explorer. If you move them from within Flare, you'll be prompted wheteher you want to update the links (say Yes to the prompt). This can sometimes be a slow process, and some people have had issues with Flare crashing when trying to move large numbers of files. After the crash however, the files seem to have moved properly and the links updated.

HTH

[sparkypoptart1]

Hi Steve,

Hi Steve,

This is the scenario:
The person who started working in the Flare project before me saved Images to 2 different folders, and in another subfolder of that folder-
i.e. Some images are in the Image folder, some images are in the Resources folders, and then in a subfolder in Resources, more images are in an additional folder named "Images".

Unfortunately, I tried to copy and paste all images into the designated Images folders in Windows Explorer...I wasn't exactly thinking when I did then, then I realized that I couldn't move over the images properly outside of the Flare application.

I have 1,392 images that now need to point to the correct folder...I'm not a programmer, so I don't have a firm grasp on the html in the background, I have a graphic artist background so I'm having a tough time with this.

Thanks for your reply,
Julie

[LTinker68]

I have 1,392 images that now need to point to the correct folder...I'm not a programmer, so I don't have a firm grasp on the html in the background, I have a graphic artist background so I'm having a tough time with this.

You don't need to be a programmer to do this. While in Flare, with the project open, drag the images from one folder to another in the Content Explorer pane. Flare will ask if you want to update the links; click Yes. If you want to move multiple files, click the icon ("Show Files") at the top of the Content Explorer pane to split the Content Explorer into two panes. In this view, you can select multiple files within a folder on the right and drag them to a different folder so that you don't have to move one file at a time.

If you've already moved the files outside of Flare, then you'll need to update the reference path to each image in the topic(s) that use that image. You might be able to do a find-and-replace within Flare with the "search in source code" option enabled. For example, if you open a topic in the Internal Text Editor that has the missing graphic image and then look for the <img> tag, you'll see something like <img src="../../../folderName/image1.png">. You could do a find-and-replace that finds on src="../../../folderName" and replaces it with src="../../Resources/folderName/. That will require some investigation on your part, because the source path in some cases could only be two levels deep, or one level deep, etc., but you might get lucky and be able to fix a whole bunch of them at once.

If you want to add a bunch of new images to the project (i.e., they hadn't been used yet), then you can use Windows Explorer (outside of Flare) to copy all those images to the appropriate folder within the project. Once they're in the project, you can then insert each image into the appropriate topic(s). That part is a manual process, because Flare doesn't know where you want the image located (referenced) in the topic.

Basic rule of thumb is, once the image is in the Flare project, only use Flare to move the image.

[svt-user]

For +1K images, it has to be worth trying to use Find/Replace. What I would do is:

1. In Flare, Create a new empty folder named IMG1 under Content.
2. Exit Flare and navigate to the project folder, and then the IMG1 folder.
3. Locate all the lost images and copy them into IMG1.
4. Now, all the images persist within Flare at one relative path: ../Content/IMG1/
5. Launch Flare and for each folder containing topics, use the Find and Replace in source code to retarget the root of the relative path to the new folder ../Content/IMG1/..

Actually, for this kind of fix I probably would not even work in flare but use Windows grep or similar. Do you have any programmers there?

A second way to fix this is:

1. Build the project, which will generate a huge broken links report. That report should list the paths of the broken links.

2. Save that report from the build dialog.

3. Extract the report from Flare as a text file.

At this point, the report is the basis of a recovery script - get some programming help to turn it into a script that will:

1. Search the Flare projects for instances of the image file name in the topic files.
2. Replace the broken file path with the location of the image at the new path. The programmer will figure out how to handle the relative paths (../../../)

[sparkypoptart1]

Thank you for the help...
Can I just do the 5 steps you have illustrated below to fix my issue?

There are programmers here, but no one who really wants to help me out with this...I tried with the one friend I have, and she blew it off...everyone's just too busy.

Thanks again,
Julie

[sparkypoptart1]

I found one of the solutions one of you provided (can't remember now ...thanks again for the replies.