Item order sometimes changes after syncing

I just ran into this problem myself for the first time. Itā€™s incredibly frustrating. I have two devices synced, Windows 7 and iPhone. Most of my editing is done in Windows (partly because the iPhone app is quirky ā€“ often the editing toolbar doesnā€™t appear right away). This morning I spent a couple hours reorganizing my outline from the Windows app. A bunch of items which were level 3 in the hierarchy (under several level 2 parents) are now level 2 (under a single level 1 parent). They basically represent current projects, ordered by priority. I colored them according to the categories which had previously been their level 2 parents. When I opened Dynalist in iPhone, the order was significantly different. I tried the suggestion of moving the top item (level 2) down to the bottom (Ctrl-Down 18 times) and back to the top, but this didnā€™t help. I updated the iPhone app to the latest version, didnā€™t help.

Basically I donā€™t know what to do, other than manually reorder both lists to match and hope this doesnā€™t happen again. If it does, Iā€™ll probably reluctantly cancel my membership and migrate to another app.

Edit: At some point, perhaps while writing the above post, or perhaps as a result of restarting the Windows app, it seems that the Windows list synchronized to match the (erroneous) order of the iPhone list. (I had previously restarted the iPhone app, to no avail.) So I then corrected the order on Windows, and when I checked the iPhone, it now matched. Iā€™ll post again if I run into this problem again.

JohnLi: Your solution worked for me. The correct, ie. most recent order, was in the Safari browser, and an older order was in the MacOS app. Itā€™s concerning still, but thanks for posting a solution.

Sorry for the late reply, Marcus!

Please let us know when it happens againā€¦ we still donā€™t know what triggered it, and we have no way to consistently repro it. Weā€™ve searched the codebase for possible causes as well, to not avail.

So the best we can do right now is to gather as much information as possible. Would really appreciate it if you have more to tell!

(I didnā€™t read all of the previous posts, my problem is a little bit different than described in the first post)
For me order sometimes changes when I paste a longer list (all in the same level, about 20 items, as plain text [shift+cmd+v on mac Chrome]). Document is synced, it looks ok, then I open different document and when Iā€™m back one item is way below the list and there is one empty node in the middle of the pasted list (not exactly middle, but somewhere within), but the empty place is not where this lonely item was in original list, I canā€™t just cut and paste the item in the empty place.
Iā€™m using only one tab in the browser and only one browser, Iā€™m not using mobile app, and it was happening before I was using desktop app. Maybe this will help. When this happen again I will tell you exactly how it changed the list after sync.

Wooow It really works!!!Thank you very much !!!

So, as an observation on this, I have definitely seen it happen on the Linux desktop version as well. If I clear the data like this:
~/.config/Dynalist/dynalist$ rm -fr data/

Then when I open the app again, the sync happens normally and everything is fine. So itā€™s something to do with sync process I believe. Maybe it doesnā€™t have to do with the data itself after all, since the next sync is fine.

Of course, I donā€™t know exactly how the sync happens (not having looked at the actual network requests using something like Fiddler). Iā€™m wondering, if items are synced individually, if it might be that ā€œlowerā€ items in a list sync before previous items, and when then do that perhaps they end up getting incorrect placement data?

If thatā€™s the case, it means the local copy (the one in ~/.config/Dynalist/dynalist/data/) is corrupted. It has the wrong ordering.

After you deleted the local copy, a fresh copy was pulled from the server, which is correct.

So my guess is that basically, a diff was generated, but was interpreted incorrectly by the app, and the wrong order is saved in the local copy of dataā€¦

Iā€™m getting similar issues.

Here is Dynalist opened in the Windows app and in Chrome side-by-side. Here just one item (ā€œclass 3 - 3 problemsā€) is in the wrong place, but sometimes I open Dynalist on my work computer (Windows app) and see things I wrote at home last night (also Windows app) totally messed up.

Iā€™m continuing to get this error. I type a list on my laptop, open it a little later on my desktop, and the list is in a different order. This is a critical failure of a core functionality of the software. Iā€™m really hoping for a little more responsiveness on this.

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Since I experienced this error once I could not reproduce it again. And the Dynalist devs havenā€™t been able to reproduce this on their devices and thus could not investigate.

But you @Mark_Eichenlaub seem to be able to reproduce it and can help!

Please make an extra dummy dynalist document and try to reproduce this error in it.

Then go to the dynalist data files on the computer with the
wrong ordering. The path should be like this:
"C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Dynalist\dynalist\data\TdWBb9gaaxKEgezpLm8XwcOm\"

In this folder you see a ā€œ.dataā€ file for each of your documents and those data files are just text files with your document data and full of meta-data. They have cryptic names like
"document-~L5NBmXXEzHkkkpDVe6SgGF9Y.data"
and if you open them you should see something like this:
{"nodes":{"version":3,"user_version":0,"available":true,"nodes":[{"id":"root","meta":"{\"c\":\"bacon\"}","collapsed"

Find the data file for the ā€œcorruptedā€ dummy dynalist document; you can search the data files for a text string you know is in the dummy document.

Just send this file to Erica or Shida. Iā€™m sure they will learn from this ā€œcorruptedā€ file.

Iā€™ll try, but so far it happens a lot with lists I actually need to use, and doesnā€™t happen with test lists I create.

Happened here. Working with Chrome and iPhone app. My work habit is to take an item, use the Move command to move it to (the end of) a group. Then type a new item in-place and move it to the end. Then move a different item to the end. And sometimes Iā€™ll go to another device and do the same with the list.

Order got mixed up on the phone.

I am also experiencing this bug at least once a week.

I am able to reproduce it with dummy lists, albeit randomly. This is what I do:

  • Using Chrome/Firefox on desktop, create two identical documents (Test A, Test B) with 3 items, each item with 5 sub-items. I use A(1,2,3,4,5), B(i,ii,iii,iv,v), C(I,II,III,IV,V).
  • Sync these documents with the phone app (or probably any other device), then close the app.
  • Copy the contents of Test B to the end of Test A.
  • For the first item in Test A, add more sub-items, remove some, move some around within and between other items, then save/screenshot this altered list before closing it.
  • Open the phone app again and compare with the saved list from the browser. Sometimes they will be in the same order, sometimes they will be scrambled.
  • Return Test A to its original contents, then repeat. The scramble bug seems to happen about 1 in 10 times for me using these dummy tests, though sometimes only one or two items are out of place.

Iā€™m still getting this bug 18 months later. Has there been any progress on this?

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i have never been able to use dynalist on ios due to this bug. only use desktop. please fix

Quick update to everyone involved here:

Iā€™ve been able to finally reproduce this issue with a consistent pattern. Within the same parent item, moving one child item up while removing another item that was before it will cause a desync of the list order. This was demonstrated in the video: Sorting/moving items doesnā€™t ā€œsyncā€ to different browser (?)

And now the good news: I have a confirmed fix for it! My patch will land in a few days to the webapp and in the next release cycle for desktop and mobile apps.
Once the fix has landed, Iā€™ll be back to double-check with everyone that itā€™s indeed effective.

Thanks to everyone involved here and I sincerely apologize for not having this fixed earlier!

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Thank you. :+1:

As always, Iā€™m late to this rodeo. And since you fixed this, I canā€™ reproduce it your way.

FYI: I did not experience this bug again after this one time two years ago.

Isnā€™t there a term like ā€œHeisenbugā€ for a bug that appears inconsistently and canā€™t be reproduced? :smile:

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Yep, thatā€™s a heisenbug :smile:

:nerd_face: nerd alert!

Iā€™ve been encountering this nasty bug as recently as in September and October 2019, in the iOS app (havenā€™t noticed it in Android), but it seems to have improved lately. Will let everyone know if I encounter it again.

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