Bookmarks stop working after document overwritten with a new version

[#1]

Hello QlikView experts,

Could you please help with the following issue?

A number of shared server bookmarks were created by users on a document in the live server of our QlikView 10 landscape. These bookmarks worked up to the point of overwriting the document with a more recent version of the document. The new version differed in that it contained a few newly added fields.

According to the QlikView reference manual if a document contains the relevant fields the bookmarks should still work. I cannot see any fields which have been changed/removed, only newly added ones. Are there any other reasons which can result in bookmarks not functioning after an overwrite?

Many thanks in advance.

Best,

Aleks

[#2 · Accepted solution]

After some bookmark testing, I have found out why the bookmarks from the old version of the document stopped working in the new one. The reason was a field which was added to the new version. The old bookmarks did not contain selection data for this field as it did not exist in the old version.

This would not be a problem normally, but that field had a setting which requires it to always have one value selected. When executed the bookmarks start by removing the selections on any fields for which they have got no selection data and because this was impossible for the new field, they would not work.

What is also interesting to note is that bookmarks created on the new version (i.e. containing a selection on the new field) worked without problems for the old version of the document. In other words reducing the number of fields with current selections in a document does not seem to be a problem for bookmarks created in previous document versions.

I hope the above helps anyone who ends up facing a similar issue.

[Jason_Michaelides]

Aleks,

I want to thank you for taking the time to explain this issue and the solution so well.  We have just had exactly the same problem on our production system after a new release last night and thanks to your post here I have been able to fix it in a reasonable timeframe.

This really highlights that this is a community and not just a Q&A forum. I hope others see this and follow your example.

Thanks again,

Jason

[#4]

Hi Jason,

Thanks for the reply. I remember how much time it took me to figure this one out and I am very happy that my post has saved someone else that time.

Best wishes,

Aleks

[#5]

Hi Aleks,

This solution helped me a year after this was posted on a very critical day. So thank you very much.

I would also like to mention that the solution, (which was not immediately obvious to me and had to play around for a few minutes) to this issue is that the user who created the bookmark should click on the bookmark, which will yield the empty result and then select the value of the filter (the additional column which must have a value), which will then yield the required result set and then save the bookmark. Hope this helps someone too.

Amitesh

[udaya_kumar]

Hi Aleksandar,

What else can be done to make the bookmark work with the newer file with new field,

Without creating new bookmark for the new file.

[#7]

Hi Uday,

If you are able to export the bookmark as an xml file (I'm not sure which kinds of bookmarks could be exported) you could try to change the xml definition, but I don't think this is very easy and might have unpredicted negative consequences.

It seems to me that the safest option is to recreate the bookmark.

Aleks

[udaya_kumar]

Thanks for the reply Aleksandar...

I will try creating new bookmarks...

[udaya_kumar]

Hi Aleks,

Can we add a trigger to select a value on the new field with the existing bookmark?

will it solve the problem?

[#10]

Hi Uday,

Do you mean adding two triggers on opening the document: one to select a value in the new field, and another to activate the bookmark? If so, I wouldn't recommend this as the bookmark would apply to everyone who opens the document, while not everyone might need it to be applied in such a default way.

It also depends on whether the new field is set to 'Always One Selected Value'. If this is the case the bookmark is not going to work anyway as it first tries to clear the selection on all fields which it does not include and this is not going to be possible for the new field.

I hope this helps.

Aleks