I may have bungled it a bit.

[Althea Day]

I thought I was smart and ported over all the decks and spreads from my old computer to the new one via dropbox. I put them in the appropriate folders, but it's still not working. The names show up but there is a box that says "no decks" when I try to access a deck. And now, when I try to find O.T. to take them out of the folders, it's hidden. Can you please tell me what to do?

[Programmer]

Hi Althea,

First of all, could you confirm what folder you have put the decks in? They used to go in the [Program Files ]/Orphalese Tarot/Packs but now they should go in [My Documents]/Orphalese Tarot/Packs.

When you say the names show up, do you mean they show up on the menu inside the program? Could you tell me the exact wording of the "no decks" message that appears you try to access a deck.

When you say that Orphalese Tarot is hidden I guess that means you are trying to look for the decks somewhere in Program Files (this is one directory that Windows might hide if you don't have administrator permissions). Is this right? As I said above, you need to put the decks in My Documents.

The fact that you moved them via DropBox won't make any difference, you could move them via DropBox or a pen drive or any other way, it is all the same.

[Althea Day]

Hello and thanks for responding. I placed the decks in the Documents section. But now when I go back to that section, there is no listing for Orphalese. I do have administrator's privileges. The decks show up on the menu within the program just as always, but when I choose one of them, a little pop-out says "no decks". I am beginning to wonder whether I should use Control Panel to remove the program and try to do it again.

[Programmer]

OK, well I am really a bit mystified right now. I was going to post earlier but I wanted to get home and check something first, namely that the message "No Decks" doesn't show up anywhere in the code as a pop-up message. This means either you are using an old version of the program or I have got the wrong end of the stick. Just to rule out the version thing, you can check it by going to About on the main menu. The most recent version is 9.4.1.9. What does yours say?

I did find the message "No Decks" in one place, which is when the program can't find any decks it might display a menu item saying "No Decks", so is it a menu item where you are seeing this or a pop-up message? But you also said the decks show up as normal in the list, it is when you click on one of the decks that the message appears. I am really scratching my head here!

One thing you could try is putting your decks somewhere completely different, perhaps somewhere on your C Drive, just anywhere that you know you have access too and that Windows will let you see and edit. Then, go into the Options form in the Orphalese Tarot >> General Settings (the top button) >> Folders tab. There you should find three buttons that let you set a custom location for decks, spreads or readings respectively. Click on the one next to Decks and then browse to wherever you put them. After that the program will look for them in that location (you might have to close and open the program again). Do you want to try that and let me know how you get on?

[Althea Day]

I have version 9.4.1.6. I just downloaded it from your website. How do I get the right version? I suppose you could call the "no decks" message a menu item. It seems to be a child of the decks I clicked on. I can find two files on the hard drive that say "deckinfo" -- can you tell me how to open them, as they are .xml files? Or is that not where I should be looking? I can't find a folder titled Packs, though I brought one over and placed it in My Documents>Orphalese.

I tried your solution of choosing a new place for packs and spreads, but when I navigated to packs the following error message showed up: There are no decks in the folder you specified - please try again or cancel. I made sure this time the original decks were put in the folder, not copies, in case it wouldn't recognize copies. I searched also for C:\Users\Althea\Documents\Orphalese Tarot\Packs and was told Windows cannot find it. I then attempted to repair the program through Control Panel and received the following error message: "The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect." I think I'm back to removing and reloading the program, unless you can come up with something else. Does it matter that I'm using Windows 8.1?

I gave up and deleted and reinstalled the program (Tarot of Dreams version) and looked in Documents for the Orphalese folder. However, it was still not there. Then I navigated to the folder where I stored the decks and lo and behold, when I clicked on a deck folder, there was nothing inside it! So that is the root of the problem -- when the program tries to find a deck there is nothing there. So how do I get the decks over to the new computer? Dropbox isn't migrating the decks, just the folders.

[Althea Day]

I also noticed that when I try to use the F6 function key to go to a specific card, it defaults to the first card in the deck, even when I click on a card in the spread. On the old computer, it goes to the card I click on. I find it necessary to use the F6 function when the popup notes are smaller than the content they contain. I am trying to think of solutions and so far I will try a thorough delete with a special program I have, and reinstall O.T. to see if that has fixed the problem. If that doesn't work, would it be possible to apply the fees I paid (I did it twice, for a license to use the program on three computers) to obtaining a separate O.T. program instead? That might solve the problems -- at least I hope so.

[Programmer]

Hi Althea, If the folders that contain the decks are empty that might certainly explain some of these problems. Basically the deck consists of a bunch of image files in a folder. The name of the folder is the name of the deck as it appears in the program's My Decks menu. All the deck folders have to be inside another folder with the name "Packs". The DeckInfo file contains additional information about the deck but isn't really important (if you want to open one you can do so with a web browser or a program like notepad). To make sure you move the whole contents of the folder over from the old computer via Dropbox you could try compressing it using a program like WinZip or WinRar. Then, instead of a whole bunch of folders and their contents you just have to worry about one file called Packs.zip or Packs.rar. When you have it in the place where you want it on the new computer you can extract all the compressed contents.

With regard to the notes being too big to view in the pop-up window, have you tried using your mouse wheel when the pop-up notes are open? This should let you scroll the notes up or down so you can read them all.

Regarding the last suggestion, obtaining a separate O.T. program, I am not quite sure what you mean. I don't think the problem has anything to do with the program being registered or not. All the things we are talking about are basic functions that should work the same if the program is unlocked or in free mode. You can check if the program is unlocked and registered correctly by clicking on "Registration" on the main menu. It should tell you "This program is licensed to Althea".

[Althea Day]

I think I've got it figured out. I'm still having a problem with one set of pop ups because it needs to be wider horizontally for me to read the list, but the other things are solved. Thank you so much for being so kind as to help.

[Programmer]

Glad I could help a bit. There isn't really a work around for the horizontal width that I can think of because the horizontal width is fixed.