Help! Deck Management Delete Question/Freakout

[Ronald Nickell]

I removed a deck from the Deck Management and it appears that it permanently deleted it from the computer itself! Is this the case?!? I ran an undelete program and cannot find it anywhere. It's permanently gone, along with the CardData.xml that I spent a week populating. PLEASE someone tell me that it's not permanently gone and that it just got put somewhere else! I doubt it, though, as a search of my hard drive came up with nothing.

If it is true that deleting/removing a deck from Deck Management permanently deletes the deck from the hard drive with zero chance of recovery, that's a HUGE problem with the interface, IMO. I'm not happy at all.

[hermit]

I know it's not comforting, but the confirmation message one gets before deleting does specify, "are you sure you want to permanently delete [deck name]?"

One way to avoid the situation you ran into is to create a "z Delete These" folder, then instead of deleting decks, just move them to that folder. The "z" keeps the folder at the bottom of the list, and if you ever want to revive any of the disposed items, just move (or copy) them back into place. Doesn't help for the one you lost, but it might help avoid a recurrence.

[Programmer]

I am really sorry to hear about your lost work, Ron.

When I first programmed the deck management facility I remember searching the internet to find a way of programatically sending files to the recycle bin instead of just deleting them, but in spite of it seeming like a relatively simple thing I could not work out how to do it. In the end I settled for just having the warning message and the delete confirmation dialog defaulting to "No". I wasn't really satisfied with this, because we all know how easy it is to delete files by mistake, but I figured it was better than no delete button at all.

Anyway, after reading your post I remember the issue and this time I managed to find out how to do it rather easily, other people having had the same problem and blogged about it.

I know the horse has bolted, but from version 8.9 and onwards the deleted files and folders go to the recycle bin (although the message users will see still says "Are you sure you want to delete X permanently?" - that is to keep the program consistent with the foreign translations).

Sorry again!
Richard

[hermit]

Outstanding, way to go Richard!