Toolbars disappearing

[pj]

Shut down all programs, including x2, and rebooted to resolve an issue unrelated to x2 and ... lost my 2nd toolbar!

x2 Ultimate 3.4.0.0, on Win 7, working in "portable" mode with settings saved to the INI file on a USB thumb drive.

So after extensive research I determined x2 just went brain-dead. Examining the INI file showed the toolbar no longer existed in the default layout. Luckily I had saved a layout last month, BACKUP, so I opened this layout in a separate window (by program design), made a few changes to the first toolbar so I had two toolbars like I wanted them to be, saved it under a new name, then, per the instructions on how to get x2 to reappear just as I left it, closed all other x2 windows, then, with BACKUP as the only window open I 1) saved settings now, 2) exited x2 with "save settings on exit" checked. Covering all the bases, right?

Opened x2 -- only one toolbar again!

So what I tried but failed to do to solve the problem because of x2 design decisions:

1) Unable to save BACKUP layout as DEFAULT - per program design!
2) Unable to copy toolbar from BACKUP layout to DEFAULT layout - per program design in spite of a blog article that states items under Customize are layout independent!
3) Unable to convince x2 to save the settings, including toolbars, from BACKUP as restart with those settings as the new default - per program design!

Tell me, did you really design x2 to be so unfriendly or am I missing a really easy way to fix this besides having to change my x2 start up to always specify the BACKUP layout?

So:

Why can I not rename my favorite layout DEFAULT?
Why can I not copy toolbars between layouts?
Why can I not save current layout on exit and have x2 restart with those settings, including toolbars as the new default?
Why are the layout and toolbar management dialogs so unhelpful - can't duplicate, can't choose new default, can't edit any settings.

After all these years of tweeks and upgrades, there are still some really, really basic stuff that x2 just doesn't get!
----------------------------
PJ

[nikos]

is it too late to ask for a refund?

look, your misconception is that toolbars go to the global settings area. They don't. Toolbars are associated to individual windows like mainframe or scrapframe. So issue #1 could be that you are copying toolbar data from/to the wrong spot in the INI file.

another possibility is that you never quit xplorer2, so the changes you made to INI were never used. To fully quit xplorer2 you must press ALT+X (FILE > EXIT)

finally, toolbars cannot be copied individually, you must copy the entire [...]\xplorer2_UC\MainFrame Settings\Toolbars and all its subkeys. It is possible to get only one toolbar but there are a few things you should be changing manually, that may not be obvious to people in a hurry to lay the blame to the next man

[pj]

Very simply, no edits were made to the INI. Only browsed a copy of the file. As you mentioned and I saw in the INI, toolbars are not separate objects attached where needed, but integrated into each main view. Complicated any ideas I had of slicing and dicing the INI to build the layouts I wanted ...

Please answer the questions I asked, I'll even change the "WHY" to "HOW" so you can show just how clever you are with workarounds:

HOW can I rename my favorite layout to DEFAULT?

HOW can I copy toolbars between layouts?

My current situation is that X2 starts with the DEFAULT layout, which is not the layout I want. I have to start a new layout, then close the original X2 window (DEFAULT layout), and manually move the new X2 window (MyLayout) into it's preferred location on my screens. Ideally X2 will start up with a default layout that I've created/modified without the process above or changing the start-up command to force a specific layout. If I can't get a workaround to the above questions, that's probably the "solution" I go with.

Thank you for your time.

[FrizzleFry]

HOW can I rename my favorite layout to DEFAULT?

HOW can I copy toolbars between layouts?

I do not think you can do either.

You can specify which layout to use on the command line (or shortcut)

C:\tools\xplorer2_ultimate\xplorer2_64.exe /S:layoutname

I stopped using the default layout as my main window a long time ago because you cannot save to default. I can't remember now why I wanted to do that but it was important then. Oh, I remember why... for example, you clone the default layout and play around with the new layout making changes you like, you then cannot save this new layout to default... on the other hand, say you clone the default layout as a backup and make changes to the default that you decide you do not want, you cannot restore the default from the backup layout.

I have wanted global toolbars for a long time. Being able to copy toolbars between layouts would be nice also.