Label and Status assignments break when sharing between two computers

Hello All,

New to the forum. We have a site license for our company and do a lot of file sharing and working off of a network. I don't know the specs of said network, but when using the color coding labels between two different machines things seemed to be working find. Status labels as well, though sometimes they'll get stuck and not change or reset for a few items for some reason. But that's not the issue I want to discuss here.

The main issue is that customizing the labels and status updates broken that continuity from one computer to the next. Even tho all of the labels colors, icons, and syntax are all identical. We heavily rely on this feature to keep our team in lock step with file progress. Can anyone guide us on how to fix it?

An example is:

I update a file in a folder with a specific label or status my colleagues are not able to see it, where as before customizing the labels things worked fine.

We were using both labels and status together...and that method worked after customization....but after we realized, that we didn't want to double right click to label these...we migrated all of our custom labeling to status...thus, nullifying the color labels (which disappeared). After which nothing translates. Even moving all of our status label to "Labels" (which there are both in the right-click menu) does not work either.

Help! lol

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Have a look at /dopusdata\ConfigFiles\colorgroups.oxc on both computers.

Each label will be defined by a line in that file, and each has a unique ID which is automatically generated if you create a new label (and predefined for the stock labels).

Any labels that you want to use on more than one machine will need to have the same ID on both. The names that you see (e.g. "Red") don't actually matter, only the IDs (e.g. "{2F499E2B-8B6E-4B80-8E3B-C73E032E801F}").

Preferences / Favorites and Recent / Labels / Automatically store labels in the file system if possible and its parent option will also need to be on.

Thanks so much for the quick reply. We just copied over the colorgroups.oxc file from one computer to the next...and that seemed to fix a part of our label list.

Currently, I cannot see all of my label changes, but my colleague can see all of my updates. And he can also see all of his own. Something is getting lost in translation. However, I'll make note that we're only using two custom icons that are located on our network and seem to be linking fine, even when going through the browser in the label settings menu.

Mind you, I can't see certain changes with the default opus icons. So I'm not sure if that's it or not. Any ideas?

Ok....I made sure that the syntax for our labels didn't have any spaces at the ends, and we found one. But both machines had them. We've since removed them, hit apply and BOOM everything seems to be working. BUT - now we can't reset some of the labeling that we were applying to test things out. This is a common issue that we've encountered....not being able to reset these labels.

Please advise. Thanks again!

I noticed that the snag was happening with the labels that have custom icons located on our network.

Nope. We're actually experiencing this with default icons also.

How are you trying to reset the labels?

Have you fully exited Opus (or rebooted) since copying the config over? (fully exiting Opus (via File / Exit Directory Opus))

There is a need for some kind of export/import function for labels. Fooling around with config files and syncing IDs between two or even more DO setups is something I'd do in an emergency case, but it's really not a long term or user friendly solution. The next change to the label/status configuration requires to repeat this and by then you really wish for some technical help, no? o)

I think the import/export would end up the same as doing a diff/merge on the config file, since the file is just a list of label names and IDs and you'd need to choose how to merge them and deal with clashes or unwanted labels.

Other approaches for shared labels may also be worth considering, such as using a label-filter or script-column if it makes sense. e.g. You could have "Red" in the file's comment give the file a red label.

I followed the instructions on exiting and everything seems to be working so far. In terms of resetting labels, I'm just using the right click menu "reset" option at the bottom of the list.

Alternatively, you can simply have an export/import label settings function as part of the settings menu. Much simpler solution for now. So one person would be the source creator of updating the list and exporting settings out to their team for import as things update. This export file should also gather all icons into the same save location OR in a container file you guys create with all of the meta data needed.

@Leo
Since labels can also be used in various folder format definitions, I assume that a simple diff on the label config files between setup A and B cannot cut it. This won't update the label IDs in all the other config files. It's more or less the same for scripted columns and their IDs, these are also spread around and they are different on each system, although they arise from the very same script being installed here and there.

The label system and its usefulness is greatly reduced because of this. I did not start to use it because of the missing export/import. I have multiple systems running DO and it's hard to understand that labels created on system A are unknown to system B unless you do a full import/replace of the DO-prefs on system B, which of course is going to destroy what you setup there in regards to labels/columns/folder formats/buttons if you don't attempt to start puzzling single bits and pieces together again afterwards.

There may be ways around using labels, script columns at least also involve a manual re-setup of folder formats, so unfortunately they are of not much help here.

The thing is..
We and I, actually want to make use of those marvelous labels as much as possible.
Avoiding them or working around them is not much fun! o))

I was only thinking about getting the definitions of the labels themselves in sync, not moving things from using one label over to another label that was intended to replace it. That's a much more complicated matter.

That part of the problem isn't really about syncing label definitions but about moving anything that uses/used one label to use another, the same as if you only had one computer and wanted to add a new label to replace another (rather than change the existing label's details).

I am not sure how a system to do that could work completely. Updating the config files is possible (but would be the same as a search & replace across them), but updating all the labels stored in ADS is difficult as there's no central record of them. It could be done by searching every drive (including network drives, USB drives, etc. if labels are used on them) for files with labels and then changing them. (That can already be done using the Find tool, to an extent.)

A way to add ID aliases to label definitions might make sense. Then either the old or new label ID would work as the same thing and nothing else would need to change, at least in theory. I am not sure how easy that would be to add, though, and how many would use it to justify the dev time & potential bugs the change might bring in. Something we need to think about further, and maybe other ideas will come to mind.

I don't know what's the protocol to show support of a feature request. But today I had the same problem of synchronizing labels.

I copied colorgroups.oxc over and restarted DO, but labels didn't pop up. Finally I had to export and import settings. Labels now are showing correctly, but private settings that differ on individual computers are gone.. I'm restoring them..

I argue partial export/import should be made possible.

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I would like to add my voice in support of this feature request.
The only method that I have found to be 100% successful is to manually re-create the labels and label assignments on the target computer.
Some means of exporting/importing label definitions and assignments would be a real time-saver.

The first reply has some information on how to transfer labels to a new machine. Exact details may depend on whether the labels are stored with the actual files or just against paths inside the config file.