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Error Message: Source File does not exist
Allan Carrington
asked this on July 30, 2008 03:07
G'day and greetings from Australia
I have created two lessons and then made a manual. Have done a lot of work and the export to HTML and PDF are fine BUT .... when exporting to a package I get the error message "Source File does not exist. It is in one of the lessons the other exports OK.
I am nervous that I cant archive nor look at this and work on it in any other copy of the program.
Anyone has any ideas why? and how to fix it?
Regards
Allan
Comments
Hi Allan,
Since the lesson exports to HTML and PDF without any problems I'm not sure what the problem might be off the top of my head.
When you export the lesson as a package what location are you trying to save it to? Is it your computer, network drive or a USB drive?
I am now having the same trouble with a manual that I've been working on for the last few weeks - I get the message "An error occurred while packaging the topic: the source file does not exist".
I was regularly exporting lessons (and later the manual) as packages from my work XP desktop, and importing them on my Mac to work on at home.
Now today, suddenly, I'm starting to get this error appearing when I export the manual or almost any of its lessons individually. One lesson does work, but why - I have no idea. All the lessons have an average of 8 screenshots (there are 9 lessons at present), and I've tried exporting to different locations (but all on the local XP computer), but no joy.
Any ideas what might have gone wrong? As I say, I've never seen this error for either lesson or manual export before. Exporting the manual as PDF still works fine, however.
As a result, I won't be able to work on the manual this weekend or in the evenings, which is probably good for me, but not great for my company's upcoming deadlines... :-|
Thanks for any help,
Alan.
PS This takes place on both the latest (early Oct) and last-but-one ScreenSteps release. I updated my ScreenSteps release to the latest version when this first appeared, but it didn't make any difference.
Wild guess here. By chance do you have any of the Thumbs.db files in your lesson media folders? Given the error message and after looking through the code I think that ScreenSteps is attempting to copy a file that the OS says isn't there. ScreenSteps just gets a list of files in the media folder and then packages them up. Without having your Library folder to look at this would be my first guess.
Sounds like a great suggestion, and a likely explanation of what has happened. I needed to find a particular source picture during the last week, so opened many of the lesson 'Media' folders in Explorer (for the first time), looking for the specific picture.
To my knowledge, Explorer automatically creates those thumbs.db thumbnail reference files automatically when you first look inside a folder there, so if ScreenSteps trips on these files, it's likely that's the cause.
Unfortunately I can't access my work PC from home, but first thing Monday I will check up on this.
By the way, is it possible that the Mac version could have the same problem with the .DS_Store files the Mac (annoyingly) creates automatically?
Thank you!
Alan.
Ok - so I can confirm this was the problem, in my case. I manually went through all the Lesson\<Number>\Media sub-folders in the ScreenSteps library folder on Win XP, each time switching the Explorer to list view, then deleting 'thumbs.db' where it appeared. Running the 'export package' item for the manual worked fine after that.
Again - thanks for your quick help!
Alan.
Thanks for the update Alan. I've fixed the issue with ScreenSteps so that when Thumbs.db generate an error it is ignored. The operating system reports that these files exist but when trying to copy them using 'copy' the OS returns the error you saw.
On OS X we filter out invisible files (files prefixed with a ".").
The fix will be in the next release. If you need it sooner just let me know and I can post a new build for you to download.
Hello,
I've had the same message today trying to duplicate a class with Screensteps 2.7 beta on Snow Leopard. I've tried to close and reopen the file, to check it exists really, but still get the error message.
I've reinstalled version 2.6.2 and get the same error
Thank you
Laurent,
Are you getting the exact same error message ("Source file does not exist") or is it slightly different.
Also, when you say "class" are you referring to a manual or lesson in ScreenSteps?
It is a lesson
Unable to duplicate lesson (error copying file in document folder (source file does not exist)
I've looked at the code and the only possibility that comes to mind is that there is a step that is linked to a non-existent image (though the error could be caused by something else). Have you manually deleted any images from the lesson media folder?
I'm going to add in an additional check for 2.7 so this error doesn't pop up.
I don't remember to have deleted any image (at least on the local folder, I've just made some move on my server when trying to figure out a problem of upload). The error has disappeared. I did nothing but add another lesson, and duplicating goes fine for the two lessons. Strange
Thank you