Style changes not applied

Help & Support
1

I may be new to this, but I can't understand why, when I edit a style, the changes don't seem to take effect. For example. I wanted to add a couple of columns (date/time accessed and short name) to one of my styles. I edited the left file and right file displays from the preferences menu (yes, with the correct style highlighted) and simply added the columns I wanted. Result: no change.

I remember when I originally created the style I had a helluva job to get it to open in power mode as it kept defaulting to details mode. It did work eventually, but I've no idea how I did it.

I shudder to think how I would get the changes to take effect across all Listers!

2

Any changes you make are temporary unless you save them to the style by right-clicking its tab and selecting Update.

3

Thanks, although it does seem that updating the preferences from the lister is back to front and the Edit columns in Preferences is superfluous as it has no effect.

4

Once you have made changes to a style you need to select that style again to have the Lister adopt the new configuration - so just click on the style tab again.

Or instead of making the changes through Prefs, use the Tools / Folder Options function to make changes to the Lister itself, and then update the style by right-clicking on the tab and choosing Update.

5

Strange thing is, what you say in your first paragraph works for some styles, but not for others i.e. in the latter case absolutely nothing changes when clicking again on the style tab!

6

Sorry in advance for the lengthy babble but:

It looks like the state of the active lister doesn't always update a style in the way you'd expect depending on how the Style was created, or at least... what some of the existing styles settings are like.

For instance, if you are in Prefs and you simply create a 'new' style, ALL of the options and checkboxes are blank... it's a clean slate. But if you then fix up your active lister so that there is only a SINGLE folder tab open, and you modify your column formatting (by any means... folder options, right clicking on column headers, etc) and finally click RMB on that newly created style and 'update' it... you will NOT see those column changes reflected the next time you try clicking on that style.

It seems the 'Update' style context option is a bit at odds with folder tabs depending on the tab state.

In any event, if you look in the styles editor at the styles you say 'updating' doesn't seem to work on to update column formatting, you should probably see that those styles:

a) do NOT have a check mark in the 'Format' box in the 'Styles Settings' section
b) are NOT loading any particular folder tabs (if you look at the 'Tabs' button for that style also in the 'Styles Settings' section)

However, even though the 'Format' checkbox might not be activated on a given style you've updated after making coumn format changes... those fomat changes SHOULD still be getting saved in the style. Try it out, then take a peek at the style editor, ENABLE the 'Format' checkbox, hit the 'Edit' button next to format, goto Columns tab and you should see your changes there... though you'd still need to additionaly check in the 'Columns' checkbox on this tab to make the style apply the column settings... whew.

Going the other way, if you've got multiple folder tabs open, then make a column format change, and select to update a similar 'newly created/clean slate' style... this 'update' maneuver WILL update the style so that you see your column format changes... but in the context of having associated the formatting with the particular folder tabs that will now load with that style.

Let's see what comments Jon might have... but I'm inclined to say that there might be a feature request in order here to make the styles 'update' maneuver a bit more interactive. It's clearly trying to guess at what it is the user wants the style to do... but since people will use Styles for different reason there might be some confirmation dialogs in order similar to what we get when we save folder format changes.. to let the user have a bit of input into exactly what things in the style will be updated.

7

Thanks for the comprehensive reply. The format boxes were checked and folder tabs loaded when I first encountered this problem ( a and b in your response). Changes made in Preferences are in fact saved in the style editor (it's not just columns, other changes e.g. 'Hide file extensions in filename name column") it's just that they're not reflected in the Lister itself, even after clicking the Style tab as mentioned earlier.

I've subsequently found that the problem is now occurring with example styles supplied with the program, some of which were updating OK previously.

Since nobody else has reported this, it must be something that I've done wrong. I'll try deleting the affected styles and starting again.

8

Strange - regarding Columns, you've seen that one of these Styles with the 'Format' box checked in ALSO has the'Columns' box checked in on the Columns tab? That box also needs to be ticked for it to actually be applied when you click that style...

9

Yep, it's ticked. It must be something to do with my configuration (or me).