Trying out new verson of JabRef, breaks access to entry table of old

Help
1

I tried out the new version 3.8.1, and found it had major problems for me and so I reverted to my old version 2.11b4.
Unfortunately, the experiment broke the old version. I can no longer access an entry table for items. I can toggle entry preview, but double clicking on an item does not open an entry table for it. If I create a new entry, it lacks an entry table.
The files in the jabref-master directory look the same as those in my backup, and I wonder what files I need to restore to recover functionality.

2

Hello,
sorry to hear that you had problems with the JabRev v 3.8.1.
Could you please tell us what kind of problems you had?

And in general, the generated bibfile is not always backwards compatible across such major versions, as JabRef stores some metadata in the bib files.

You can open the bib files with any text editor and compare them, then you will see what is different.

Regards
Christoph

3

Thanks, Christoph. I understand your point, but it does not do me much good. I retreated to 2.11b4 and copied bib file meta-data from backups. Unfortunately, it appeared to have been broken by my experiment with 3.8.1, and now I’m back to 2.11.b2, which is working fine. The reason for this retreat is that version 3.8.1 still cannot distinguish similar group names. Sop when I click on a group, often many times more entries are displayed than I need.

4

Hi Haines, I think maybe I am having the same issue as you are describing (can’t open data entries through double clicking or otherwise, can’t create new entries). I found a version of 2.11.b2 and installed that instead, but this did not work for me. Still can’t edit / create entries. Could you describe how you got it to work again?

5

ana,

Wish I could be of some help. I had been using version 2.11.b4 for quite
some time because upgrades produced significant problems. When I found
that 3.8.1 had a crippling shortcoming I beat a retreat back to my
2.11.b4, but it now ceased to work in the manner you describe. I
retreated further to 2.11.b2, which works OK.

I suppose problems with such old betas cannot be a significant concern
for folks working on JabRef. I pulled a copy of 2.11.b4 from backup, and
it fails in the same way as the previous copy. I closed all databases
and created a new database and tied to create an entry, but to no avail.

Haines

6

Hi Haines, Thanks anyway. What ended up working for me was the following, from Christoph. Hope it works for you!

Hi,

this is really strange behavior. the only option I see is atm to reset your preferences and check if it works again, then.
Options- > Preferences -> Reset Preferences (left corner)

Hope that helps.

Regards
Christoph

7

Ana,

Strange. In my 211.b4. when I go to Options->Preferences, the
Preferences dialog opens with the General page. It does not have a “Reset
Preferences” option. Nor do the other pages in Preferences. To its left is
the menu of pages and buttons to import or export preferences.

Haines