How to solve the favorites problem

[WongoTheSane]

I've had the Favorites folders problem for some time now, and I read two days ago a thread (which, naturally, I can't find now) about it where several people explained the problem, but there was no solution in sight.

Here is what happens. Upon clicking on a Favorites folder, some of the sounds are unavailable, italicized and a yellow triangle appears to the left, like this:

favs01.JPG (34.99 KiB) Viewed 2942 times

To make them available again is a bit convoluted: you have to locate a Refill that contains one of those unavailable sounds, open one of its sounds in any way (like dragging it in the sequencer) so that Reason locates the Refill, and then the sounds in the Favorites turn available again. Not always: sometimes, some sounds remain unavailable and you have to repeat the procedure until all missing Refills have been located. This is rather annoying, as you have to repeat this everytime you open Reason.

I don't know whether it happens on Macintoshes too, as I only have a PC.

CAUSE

Here is what happens: when you add a patch to a Favorites folder, the path to the Refill is stored in a file; part of the path is the name of the hard disk. For instance, my D: drive, where most of my Refills are, is called "Delta", so Reason will store a path similar to this:

Delta (D:)\Reason\Refills\SomeRefill.rfl

Which, in the Windows world, is a big no-no: the "friendly name" of the hard disk should never be used by applications ever. It should simply be "D:\". I suppose the Props tried to accomodate for possible network paths, or hot-swapping or something, I don't know.

So, if you ever change that friendly name, the Refills will be flagged as missing by Reason, even if the hard disk is the same, with the Refills in the correct folder. It'll also happen if you swap your hard disks, even if you maintain the same directory structure. That's the problem in a nutshell. You'll never encounter it if you don't edit your hard disk's name, or upgrade it.

Adding one patch with the new HD name in a fav folder won't solve it: that patch will be recognized the next time you open Reason, but the "missing" ones still won't, even if you have done the procedure described above, as the paths are only modified in-memory and not saved to disk.

SOLUTION

It's rather easy: we have to force Reason to rewrite the fav lists with the updated paths.

1) Create a dummy Favorites folder by clicking on the "+" sign that's right under the folders list in the browser:

favs02.JPG (47.71 KiB) Viewed 2942 times

2) Click on a fav folder containing missing sounds, and note the name of one of those patches. Here, I'll choose "Phones", the first one.

3) Locate the sound with the search box. In this example, I know that all my Refills are in a "Refills" folder, which I have placed in my folders list, so I'll click on my "Refills" folder first, then type "Phones" in the search box, and type Return:

favs03.JPG (32.12 KiB) Viewed 2942 times

(there seems to be a limit to the number of pictures per message, so let me create a new post below...)

[WongoTheSane]

4) I have several sounds containing "Phones", but I know the one I favorited is the last one. I'll simply drag it to the "Dummy" folder I created at step 1, to allow Reason to locate the updated path:

favs04.JPG (35.36 KiB) Viewed 2941 times

5) Click on the original folder to check if the sounds are available again. Here, I'm lucky, they are. Sometimes, some sounds are still unavailable; simply repeat the "locate sound/drag it onto the dummy folder" procedure until all sounds are found.

favs05.JPG (54.04 KiB) Viewed 2941 times

6) Now, create a new fav folder under the same name but with "2" at the end (or anything else, it doesn't matter, it's just to keep track of what we're doing) by clicking on the "+" sign at the end of the folder list:

favs06.JPG (14.67 KiB) Viewed 2941 times

(on to the next post...)

[WongoTheSane]

7) Click on the original folder, type Ctrl-A (to select all sounds), and drag them to the newly created folder (the one with "2" at the end):

favs07.JPG (52.53 KiB) Viewed 2939 times

8) To make sure everything works as intended, quit Reason and restart it. Check that the sounds are all found in the new folder:

favs08.JPG (54.16 KiB) Viewed 2939 times

No italics, no warnings, we're all set!

9) Delete the original folder:

favs09.JPG (54.33 KiB) Viewed 2939 times

10) Rename the new folder to the old name (i.e. remove the "2" at the end if you have followed my naming scheme).

11) Repeat for every folder that had missing sounds.

12) Final step: delete the "Dummy" folder.

That's it. All sounds ready and reporting for duty, Sir!

Don't let the length of this post put you off: it's much, much quicker to do than to read! The whole thing only takes minutes.

Have fun!

[HessnerAndersen]

Hi Wongo. Thanks for your time solving the problem They are all back again thanks

[kuhliloach]

[jappe]

If the problem was that the drives friendly name was changed, I guess it could be changed back with this DOS command:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Label_(command).

If the drive letters were swapped...hmm...maybe a solution would be to use the subst DOS command to make a link for the refill master directory on the original drive to the drive of the current location: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUBST