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After running the application for the third time (close and reopen it), the images panel reappeared with no changes in preferences or any settings on my laptop. When clicked, images open as expected, and they still show up in the Properties/Item Pictures tab. Very odd behavior. It is unclear what caused the image panel not to display, and why it suddenly appeared after several app restarts, so it is unclear if it will happen again 'out of the blue'. However, the Preferences dialog box remains impaired as described above. Problematic.

I'm in the process of transferring my licensed copy of HomeManage2020 from an old laptop to a new one. The steps I completed are: Run HomeManage2020 on the old laptop Deactivate the license from the Tools/Licensing menu. (success. no error notifications) Install the May 2020 downloaded version of HomeManage2020 (20.0.0.10) on the new laptop Run the Check for Updates menu under help on the new laptop (it completed successfully updating to 20.0.0.18) Customize preferences to specify the locations of my database, asset images, and reports Close HM2020. Reopen HM2020. Verify that my database is opened (success) I noticed some problems: The Preferences dialog box is different. In the Preferences dialog, there is no longer the option to change the font size at the bottom of the Preferences tab. The missing option is called Font Size For Lists of Items. There are only 3 panels on the main application screen instead of 4 panels: navigation (panel on the left), the asset list (panel along the top), and the summary information window (panel below the asset list that displays the selected asset's details). The images panel is missing. The only images visible are the thumbnails in the asset list panel above. However, the images were not deleted. If I open the Properties dialog box for an asset, and select the Item Pictures tab, all of the images appear there as expected. The Unused Rooms list and the 2 buttons below it (Add a Room and Delete) are missing, and the Unused Categories list moved from the right side of the dialog box to the left side, taking the space of the Unused Rooms list; the Enable Webcam Features checkbox, which use to be below the Unused Categories list moved up since that listbox is missing. Pictures of these changes would make conveying them much simpler, but the 50K pictures upload limit prevents that. Are these known issues with the 20.0.0.18 update? What is causing these issues and when will they be fixed? Is there anything I need to do to fix them? Thank you David

The subject of my post is the exact text of the error message. The only thing missing is the statement to contact Liberty Street Software for support. I attempted to upload a screenshot of the dialog box that has the error, but this forum would not allow the file to be posted apparently because it was larger than 57K. Thanks, David

I cannot get the update to run on my desktop because of the error message in the subject. The drive S: that the error message says "does not exist" does indeed exist because I can do a directory listing of it at the console, and I can explore its contents in Explorer. How can I proceed with the update? The update process seems to be getting more problematic. The first issue I had was that the update process won't run from within the application without catastrophic failure. Now even when I run the update directly from the link provided by the admin at LibertyStreet, the update fails with the above message! It's getting very tedious and frustrating keeping this software updated! Something is broken with the update process. I need help determining what is broken. David

The error message in the subject is what I get when I run the Check for Updates menuitem under the Help menu. The full error message is Error: Update information for HomeManage 2020 could not be downloaded. Please contact Liberty Street Software for help. First I want to check for updates as I am currently running version 20.0.0.10 for a while and thought there might be fixes for some of the issues I encounter. So I want to update if there is an update. What causes this problem? And how can I fix it? I've seen the problem several times before with several different versions of HomeManage (2020, 2019, 2018, and maybe more). The solution has always been the admin gives me a link to the update file and I download and apply it. That's works. But how do I fix the problem so this doesn't happen any more and the update process works as it is suppose to? Is there something I've got configured improperly? Thanks, David

Are you saying there is no way to point the application at an MDB that has a different name? Thx, David

I've thought of that idea and the MDB is the easy part (though the renaming approach is potentially prone to mistakes). But seems like it's not a good or complete solution. For example, how would this work when images of the assets I'm testing are involved (for example, adding, deleting or rearranging images)? Wouldn't it corrupt my image repository so that when I switch back to the "production" MDB, the images will not be as they were before? And a secondary concern: wouldn't the same problem described above for images exist for any reports that I might modify while in "test" since the report files aren't in the MDB?

Great question. I'd like to know too. David

Is there a way to use HM with a second "test" database? The "test" database would be a copy of my original database & images & attachments and I'd use it to try some things in test so that if it doesn't work out well, I don't ruin my primary database. For example, learning how to use the Clone functionality properly, or when manipulating images, or when working around bugs I find that haven't been fixed yet. Thanks David NOTE: I've asked about some of the items I would test in this forum, but have received no guidance on those issues. So its left to me to figure it out. A test db would help me determine answers without risk of corrupting my primary database whenever its necessary to do that.

Hi Ron, I'm not certain of the cause of the error you list above, but the only time that I've seen that kind of error is when I have tried to enter text that contains an apostrophe in it. For example: User's Manual. HM will choke on the apostrophe and spit out an error usually. Try avoiding single quotes/apostrophes to see if this works around the bug. David

I tried the check for update as you mention, but it is still broken from the last time that I contacted you. It just produces an error message and does not download anything. The error message is below: Error: Update information for HomeManage 2020 could not be downloaded. Please contact Liberty Street Software for help. My apologies!! I just noticed that I am still running version 20.0.0.10 and have not applied the 20.0.0.14 update. Is this the update that you are referring to? I think I didn't run the update because I wasn't sure if the setup process still deletes folders in the user profile start menu\programs folder. Another user outlined all the corruption he found and I recall finding the same thing on my machine. Has this problem been fixed?

@admin, any news on what features or fixes to expect in the 2021 update? release timing? Thanks David

@admin, any progress with this yet? Thanks, David

I don't work for LibertyStreet and so I cannot speak to the design of HomeManage, but I can share what I've learned regarding font size. I have a 4k monitor (3840x2160) and the default font size of the interface is far too small to comfortably read for any length of time. I have noticed four distinct areas where fonts are used: The UI: the application user interface (menus, dialog boxes, "Locations", "Categories" and "View By" tree lists, Search box, Add Item, Image Captions, etc.) The Asset List: windows containing asset lists (default location is the top half of the app) The Summary Pane: the windows that contains the summary info for a selected asset (usually center lower area of app) The Comments section: the largest free text are of the summary panel From what I can tell, there is no setting within the application to adjust #1 above, the app user interface objects. The lists in #2 above can be adjusted in the app. This is the only area the app provides users a clear means to adjust. In HomeManage 2020, on the HomeManage Preferences dialog box, on the first tab (Preferences tab) at the bottom of the box is a section called "Font Size For Lists of Items" and it has a dropdown selection list in it that allows me to pick a font size from 10 to 36. No units are given for the numbers. Though the numbers appear to be familiar point sizes, from my experience, they don't behave that way. For example size 24 in HomeManage appears to be the same size as 11 pt. text in MS Word. There's also a note that says you must exit and restart the app for the change to take effect. There is no setting within the app to adjust the size of the text in the summary window. But I have found a way to temporarily increase the size of text in the window; it appears to behave like a browser web page (HTML-based): Move the mouse pointer to hover over the summary panel (the fields have gray background and the values have light blue background) Press and hold the Ctrl key while scrolling the mouse wheel (or Ctrl + numeric keypad "+" or "-") to adjust the text size either up or down. This change is not persistent and the next time you run the app, the text will retain its original size. Note also that the quality of the "zoomed" text is degraded as the kerning between letters is not adjusted consistently and the letterforms get a little distorted; however it is readable. Aside from using the Ctrl+Mouse method above, in the Comments section you can add HTML tags in the text to control the appearance of the text in many ways: size, font, font color, headings, bold, italics, paragraphs and more. This is highly customizable, but significant effort and perhaps impractical for most users. To learn about the tags, see W3School's reference at this link. Hope this is helpful. David

Recently I ran the update check to see if there were updates available for HM2020 version 20.0.0.10 and got the Update Error message: Error: Update information for HomeManage 2020 could not be downloaded. Please contact Liberty Street Software for help. See the graphic. What does this mean and how can I resolve it? Thanks, David

What are the features you're focusing on for the HomeManage 2021 version?

I have the same issue with the toolbar -- it's gigantic and cannot be sized down. I'm running HomeManage 2020 on two Windows 10 20H2 machines, and this issue only happens on one of the machines. It's not clear why only one is impacted.

Seems like either way should work.

@admin, any progress with this issue? Thank you David

@admin, I submitted this issue quite a while ago and it is related to another issue I tagged you in. If you could address these I would appreciate it. Thank you David

@admin can you please address this issue? Thank you David

I added a couple entries in the item notebook for a monitor that was already in the database. There were already 5 notes in the notebook, thus making a total of 7 notes in the notebook for the monitor: one note on each day of Jan 16, 17, and 18 in 2018, 2 notes on October 24 and 2 notes on October 27 in 2020. I had no problems entering the notes into the notebook. But when I click OK on the notebook entry dialog and view the results on the main panel, only the last note shows. I thought maybe the older notes got deleted somehow, so I went back into the Notes dialog and all three notes are still there, just as I typed them. I've entered notes for other items (for example, for my car each time it is serviced), and not all notes show up on the main panel, but it has never been this extreme. Just now I checked and there are 37 notes for my car, but only 10 notes show up on the main panel. For the monitor I mentioned above, there are 7 notes in the database, but only 1 shows up on the main panel. I have mentioned this problem once before in this forum. Thanks for your attention David

I mentioned this problem some time ago as well. I don't think I got a response. And I'm not sure how it got fixed, but somehow I'm on 20.0.0.10 and it no longer attempts to "upgrade" me to 20.0.0.8. Wish I could help more. 😞

I've been wondering about that. I learned a bit more about the circumstances that may have contributed to this because it happened a second time on my laptop, where I had HomeManage 2018 installed -- all my image files deleted and my assets.mdb file overlaid with the default assets.mdb file! So I have a question. What will the installation program do in this scenario below: What happens if upon installation of HomeManage 2020 on a machine that has HomeManage 2018 already installed I choose NOT to have the application installed in the existing program folder (the existing program folder is called HomeManage 2018, so installing HomeManage 2020 into that folder seems like it could cause confusion down the road). Instead I allow the application to install in a new program folder called HomeManage 2020 on the same drive. I noticed that the 2020 installation application read all of my 2018 folder locations -- they were prepopulated into the corresponding folder locations in the installation program. The only folder location that was different was the program folder, which I allowed to remain HomeManage 2020. I proceeded with the install which ran to completion without error and without pause to ask me if I wanted to overwrite any files. It was after the installation was completed that I learned that yet again, it had deleted all my images and my assets.mdb file. In this scenario, does the installation program check for the existence of an assets.mdb file before it attempts to create the default assets.mdb file? I suspect it does not. If it does not, then creation of the default assets.mdb file would clobber any existing file with the same name in the target folder. That would explain how my file got deleted. Not sure how the image files would have been deleted, but they were deleted. I had to restore them in their original folder to get them back. TIA David