Troubleshoot Chandler

CHANDLER DESKTOP

Install Errors

libicu36 dependency error on Ubuntu 8 (Hardy Heron)

Ubuntu 7 (Gutsy Gibbon) and Ubuntu 8 (Hardy Heron) ship with different icu libraries: libicu36 and libicu38 respectively. We currently support libicu 36 in the Chandler .deb install.

To remedy this situation, you can either:

1. Use the .tar.gz download instead of installing a .deb; or
2. Download and install libicu36
   • Opening the resulting file should launch GDebi package installer
   • Then install the Chandler .deb

No Chandler in applications menu on Ubuntu.

1. Go to System>>Preferences>>Main Menu
2. In the Menus box on the left, choose the menu you want to add it

1. Click the [New Item] button on the right.
2. In the Create Launcher dialog that pops up, fill in the following:
   • Type: Application
   • Name: Chandler
   • Command: chandler (All lowercase.)
   • Comment: Manage notes, tasks and events (Or put whatever you like here.)
   • Note: If the Chandler icon does not automatically appear in the button on the left (and you want one), click that button. Then enter the

1. Click [OK].

To add a launcher to the top panel, next to the System menu. After you add to the menu, this one is easy.

1. Right-click an empty part of the top panel. Choose Add to Panel.
2. Select Application Launcher (not Custom Application Launcher).
3. Click [Forward].
4. Choose Office>>Chandler.
5. Click [Add].
6. Right-click the Chandler icon and choose Move to put it where you want it.

Start-up Errors

"Another Chandler is already running off the same data repository."

This is a known issue with the 1.0 rc-1 and rc-2 releases. If you upgrade to the latest release, the problem should go away.

Note To ensure that you avoid data loss, locate the backup.chex file in your Chandler directory on your computer and copy it to your desktop so you can manually File>>Import>>Reload Chandler Data from .chex File if the upgrade fails to automatically reload your data for some reason.

• On Mac, your Chandler Directory is in: Home (your user name)>>Library>>Application Support>>Open Source Applications Foundation>>Chandler
• On Windows, your Chandler Directory is in: C:\Users\(your user name)\AppData\Roaming\Open Source Applications Foundation\Chandler\

Chandler quits on launch or won't start.

Solution: Hold down the Ctrl key while launching Chandler to repair your data.

1. Start Chandler, and hold down the Ctrl (Control) key
2. A Start-up Options dialog will appear, giving you a list of choices:
   • The first option is to simply start Chandler as usual. If Chandler was failing to launch properly, this is unlikely to help.
   • The next 4 options provide you with various clean-up options. As you work your way down the list, the risk of data loss increases.
     • Do internal clean-up, but save my data and preferences
     • Discard recent changes until data integrity tests pass
     • Discard recent changes until application no longer fails to start
     • Discard my full-text index and reindex all my data

If none of the above options work...

1. Locate your backup.chex file in your Chandler directory and make a copy of it to your desktop. Assuming the last time you quit Chandler, you did so without any problems and you haven't opted out of backing up your data every time you quit, you should be able to reload your data into Chandler without any noticeable data loss.
   • On Mac, your Chandler Directory is in: Home (your user name)>>Library>>Application Support>>Open Source Applications Foundation>>Chandler
   • On Windows, your Chandler Directory is in: C:\Users\(your user name)\AppData\Roaming\Open Source Applications Foundation\Chandler\
2. Hold down the Ctrl key when launching Chandler and choose the 5th option Discard all my data and start with a fresh repository. (If Chandler still fails to launch, uninstall Chandler and download a new version.)
3. In Chandler, go to File>>Import>>Reload Chandler Data from .chex File and select the backup.chex file you copied to your desktop.
4. Chandler should reload with your data.

Before choosing any of the above options... take a look at how you can help us figure out what went wrong.

Sync Errors

There is "!" icon next to my shared collection(s).

More often that not, sharing errors are temporary (because your wireless connection dropped down during a background sync for instance). Simply syncing again will solve the problem.

To get more information about what may be going wrong, try the following:

• Hover your mouse over the "!" icon in the sidebar next to your collection. A tooltip will give you a more detailed error report.
• Hit the Sync button and monitor the messages that go by in the status bar (bottom of the Chandler main window).

Sometimes, a single corrupt item can prevent an entire collection from syncing. If that's the case, the tooltip error message may provide you with some clues about which item is causing the problem. Remove that item and try syncing again.

If none of the above get rid of your sharing error, send mail to to chandler-users@osafoundation.org. You may be asked to provide a transcript of your Sharing Log. You can access your sharing log by going to Share>>Manage... and clicking [View Error Details..] at the bottom of the dialog.

Chandler IMAP folders aren't showing up.

It may take anywhere between 20 minutes to an hour for IMAP folders to sync across email applications.

Gmail Users Gmail puts IMAP folders in the green Labels section of the left-hand sidebar, underneath your "Contacts" list. They will show up as:

• INBOX/Chandler Events
• INBOX/Chandler Mail
• INBOX/Chandler Starred

So you won't find them amongst the blue links at the top.

Thunderbird Users Thunderbird doesn't automatically subscribe to newly created IMAP folders. You need to manually subscribe by going to:

• File>>Subscribe... (Mac)
• Tools>>Account Settings>>Manage Folder Subscriptions>>Subscribe (Windows, Linux)

Thunderbird + Gmail Users Chandler IMAP folders on Gmail will show up in Thunderbird under the Inbox. More details as to why this is so.

"Time out error" when syncing IMAP Email account.

Chandler scans your Inbox for messages sent from other Chandler applications before downloading messages from your IMAP folders. If you Inbox is very large, it's possible your mail server isn't responding quickly enough and Chandler gives up on the connection. Try reducing the number of messages you have in your Inbox and sync again. (How many messages you can leave in your Inbox will depend on the how quickly your email server can respond to requests from Chandler.)

Messages I drag into Chandler folders aren't showing up in Chandler.

1. The messages may not be syncing from your email app. Are the messages showing up on the server? Log into via webmail and check and see if the messages have been synced up to your mail server.
2. The messages were already downloaded into Chandler Desktop. Chandler ignores messages that have been previously downloaded. Perform a search to make sure the messages you're waiting for haven't already been downloaded, "read" and "cleaned up" out of the NOW section.
3. Sync Errors Go to File>>Sync>>Mail and watch the status bar at the bottom of the Chandler window for any error messages that might provide a valuable clue as to what's going wrong.

Also, go back to File>>Accounts... and try reconfiguring the IMAP folders by removing them and adding them again. Don't know exactly why, but sometimes that works

Chandler messages aren't downloading from Gmail IMAP account.

Solution: Configure Chandler IMAP folders and Create a filter (tiny link next to [Search the Web]

• For a message that Has the words: "Starred Message from Chandler", Apply the label: "INBOX/Chandler Starred" to the the message.
• For a message that Has the words: "Event from Chandler", Apply the label: "INBOX/Chandler Events" to the the message.

Note Since emailed notes (plain messages) don't have Chandler-specific text pre-pended to the message body, they won't be picked up by these rules.

I can't use Chandler behind my company firewall.

In Chandler Desktop, go to File>>Configure HTTP Proxy to configure your proxy server.

If you would like to sync with Chandler Hub, you must configure a new Chandler Server Sharing account instead of simply setting up the default Chandler Hub Sharing account. (The Chandler Hub Sharing account assumes an https connection.)

1. In Chandler Desktop, go to File>>Accounts...
2. Create a new Chandler Server Sharing account.
3. Configure the account with the following settings and then click [Test...] to make sure the account is configured correctly.

Server: hub.chandlerproject.org
Path: /
User name:
Password:
Port: 80  [ ] Use SSL (leave unchecked)

Not quite done...

1. In the left-hand sidebar, select the U.S. Holidays collection and go to Share>>Unsubscribe (it uses https).
2. In fact, if you have already published or subscribed to any collections with the default Chandler Hub Sharing account type, all of those collections will use https, so you will need to unpublish or unsubscribe to them and then republish them using the custom configured Chandler Server Sharing account.

For more details, see bug 1224.

Help us figure out what's going wrong.

When you run into an error or crash, there are a couple of things you can do to help us figure out what the problem is.

1. Provide us with your Chandler.log file. You can find your log file in your Chandler Directory.

• On Mac, your Chandler Directory is in: Home (your user name)>>Library>>Application Support>>Open Source Applications Foundation>>Chandler
• On Windows, your Chandler Directory is in: C:\Users\(your user name)\AppData\Roaming\Open Source Applications Foundation\Chandler\

• Attach the log to a bug if one has already been filed, or
• Contact us on the Chandler-Users List and someone will tell you where to send your log.

2. Provide us with a snapshot of your repository by holding down the Ctrl key while launching Chandler and selecting Make a snapshot of all my data to submit with a bug report, then quit. This will save your repository without any data loss in a compressed .tgz file. You can submit your repository to our secure server by following the instructions on the repository submit page. Please follow up by filing a bug as well and be sure to include the repository ID you receive after successfully submitting your repository.

Using Chandler

Items are in the wrong Triage sections.

Items stay in a triage section even after you've changed the triage status until you tell Chandler you're done with them by hitting the Clean-up button or pressing F5 (Fn-F5 on Mac laptops). This prevents items from automatically jumping around as you change their triage status and allows Chandler to gather newly created and recently edited shared items at the top of the NOW section so you can review them as a group before you file them into the appropriate Triage sections.

I can't drag multiple items into another collection.

If you make sure that you do not mouse-up after you've selected the last item you want to drag-n-drop, multi-select and drag-n-drop should work. In other words,

• Instead of: shift/ctrl/cmd - select, select, select, mouse-up and then drag-n-drop
• Do: shift/ctrl/cmd - select, select, select-and-drag-n-drop (without mousing up after you make the last selection).

Solution #2: Copy/Paste

Another option is to use the Edit>>Copy and Edit>>Paste menu items, i.e. copy the items, then switch to the collection where you want the items to go, and then paste them.

I can't sync my Dashboard collection.

If you were hoping to:

• Use the Dashboard collection as a quick place to dump new items without having to worry about which collections they belong in, but
• You also use Chandler on multiple computers and therefore need to be able to sync all of your data through Chandler Hub:

Create a new collection to dump items into, and publish that to Chandler Hub.

So long as you:

• Publish all of the collections you created and sync them across all of your computers; and
• Keep the same collections in/out of the Dashboard across all of your computers...

The Dashboard collection should remain identical across all of your computers.

I don't see the same collections on Chandler Hub and Chandler Desktop.

Chandler will keep collections you've created in sync between your Chandler Hub account and Chandler Desktop. However, to get Chandler Desktop collections to show up on Chandler Hub, you must publish them individually by going to the Share>>Publish menu. (Unfortunately, the out of the box Dashboard, In and Out collections cannot be published at this time. See above for workarounds.) Chandler Desktop will automatically prompt you to sync any collections you create on Chandler Hub.

Collections you subscribe to won't be automatically kept in sync. You will need to subscribe individually from Chandler Desktop and Chandler Hub.

• To subscribe in Chandler Desktop, go to Share>>Subscribe... and paste in the sharing URL.
• To subscribe in Chandler Hub, click on the sharing URL and click ADD TO MY ACCOUNT under the Collection Name in the upper left-hand corner.

No Month View?

(UTC) Events I imported show up in "GMT+00:00" time zone.

Solution: To get around this will require working through the command line.

1. Download http://svn.osafoundation.org/vobject/trunk/vobject/change_tz.py
2. Use change_tz.py to convert your UTC events to the local time zone.
3. A new .ics calendar file will be created called: filename.ics.converted
4. Re-import the converted calendar into Chandler.

Step #2 is slightly different depending on which platform you're on:

Mac OS X:

1. Make sure change_tz.py and your .ics calendar file are both on the Desktop
2. From the Finder, go to Applications/Utilities and launch the Terminal app
3. From Terminal, type cd Desktop and hit [return]
4. Then type /Applications/Chandler.app/Contents/Resources/release/RunPython change_tz.py filename.ics and hit [return]

Windows

1. Find the Chandler folder in C:\Program Files\. (It should be labeled Chandler plus ###, where ### is the version # of the first version of Chandler you ever downloaded.
2. Put both change_tz.py and .ics calendar file into that Chandler folder.
3. From the Start menu, select Run...
4. Type: C:\Program Files\Chandler###\release\RunPython.bat C:\Program Files\Chandler###\change_tz.py C:\Program Files\Chandler###\filename.ics and hit [enter]

No Global Search?

Search is sticky in Chandler so you can start a search in one collection and then browse around your collections without existing "search mode".

Can't mark past events as DONE in U.S. Holidays calendar

Solution: Delete your current U.S. Holidays calendar and subscribe to this one.

1. Right-click on your U.S. Holidays collection and select Delete
2. Go to Collection>>Empty Trash
3. Subscribe to this instead: https://hub.chandlerproject.org/pim/collection/7febe2f4-324c-11dd-d9e4-0016cbca6aed?ticket=01q75n1sy0

CHANDLER HUB

I still haven't received my account activation email.

If you still can't find it, go back to http:hub.chandlerproject.org and click on Lose your activation email? below the login box.