I've run into this more times than I can count...

The "Favorites" lists are some kind of [censored]ized, custom file-system Equis came up with, but it has never been reliable, stuff just "disappears" and it has never been fixed, or even addressed/recognized, that I know of.

There are only two solutions, both bad:

1. Make regular a copy of FAVORITES.DTA file using Windows Explorer (usually in the C:\Equis\Metastock folder). You'll have to do this every time you make a new list. Keep multiple historical copies, as you will never know when your ENTIRE group of "Favorites" lists will disappear -- there is no warning or symptom, it's just not there all of a sudden -- could be current session, or the next time you fire up Metastock.

It will eat up disk space, as the file always grows, never shrinks and I've never found a utility to "clean" or check it. Mine is 18 Megabytes, and only has a few lists of a dozen items or so.

2. Do NOT use the "Favorites" system; keep separate lists instead -- you can make your own folder in C:\Metastock Data\, copy the securities to it using The Downloader, then add that folder to the Downloader so it will be updated.

If your lists are the result of Explorations, you might copy & paste to Excel, just so you don't lose the results, but there's no way to get them back into Metastock (that I know of), to use them to view charts & whatnot.


--Johnathan

This is an issue that is not new. Our Support department duplicated this some time ago and submitted it to our developers but we are still waiting on a fix. The issue we found was that adding securities to favorites from an exploration report would sometimes result in the securities being added as "unknown item". We have not seen them change to that after they were added. If they are changeing after being added, please contact support and there may be some other issue on your system.

jjstein is correct in suggesting you back up your favorites if you have put effort into organizing them as you desire, but I would like to address a few of his other comments.

An empty favorites file is about 3 kb in size. The favorites are just a list of shortcuts that point to the original file/data. If you delete a security from favorites, it should reduce the size accordingly. If for some reason, your file is larger than it should be (ie 18 meg), there are several approaches to correcting this.

The most direct would be to delete the favorites.dta file and add back the desired securities. If you only have a few, this should not be an issue.

There is a second option if you are using online data but it is more involved.
1) Run an exploration on your entire favorites list that does not have a filter ("Equis Performance Daily" for example).
2) Copy the results to Excel and then delete all the columns but the Symbol column.
3) Save the data from Excel into CSV format
4) Open the CSV file in notepad to make sure it contains nothing but the symbols, one per line
5) rename the CSV file, changing the extension from .CSV to .SYM
6) copy the .SYM file to the downloader folder (usually c:\program files\equis he downloader
7) close metastock and delete the favorites.dta file

open metastock and look in file open. under your online vendor will be a new folder named the same as the .SYM file. Inside that folder will be all the securities from your favories. you can use this list as an alternative to favorites or you can run the unfiltered exploration again, but this time on the contents of the .SYM file. Then save the results back to the new favorites file.

>>Our Support department duplicated this some time ago and submitted it to our developers but we are still waiting on a fix.

The problem has been around since Metastock since the 8.0 version...

If you can give someone a kick-in-the-behind in the right direction, you might have them address the problem of Trendlines and Channels not staying where they're put, if any of the coordinates are not an integer. Been around since 8.0, too.

Also, any previous System Tests cannot be viewed when any OPT variables were used, if OPT(s) are removed is changed to a constant. Since 8.0, too.

Be nice if they maintained a bug list somewhere, so individuals don't waste INCREDIBLE amounts of time trying to duplicate/investigate/work-around problems already documented.

My $0.02 worth for the day.

Vladimir,

Unfortunately, the issues referenced in this thread have not been fixed yet, even in version 11. I do not know if this will be corrected in the next version. I hope so, but I can not say for sure till the developement cycle is finished.

You should be able to restore a backed up copy of your favorites, if you do it while MetaStock is shut down. MetaStock reads the favorites file into memory when you first access it. All changes during that session are stored in memory and then written back to the when you close MetaStock. If you are replacing the favorites file when MetaStock is open, then you restored copy is being overwritten with the old file when you close metastock.


jjstein,

I suggest the second option only for online data because the .SYM file functions as a security type category in our symbol database. The symbol data base is only used for accessing online data and for creating new local data files. The only equivalent action for local data is to copy the securities from the exploration to a new local data folder (one of the alternatives you suggested to using favorites).

If you do create .SYM files, you can name them anything you wish, includeing putting a date in the name.
For example: "Long20110401.SYM".

if you pursue this option, each folder in your favorites would be converted to a separate .SYM file

We do not use patches. We tried those in version 6 and the cause more problems than they solved by customers downloading and trying to run patches for different versions than they had or they did not need because they already had the latest build. When we moved to version 7, developement stopped making patches. We still update and fix issues with the software and these are released as either free maintainence versions (ei 8.0 to 8.01) or major upgrades.

You can always submit issues you find via email to suggestions@equis.com

Hi Jjstein

Regarding this issue, I found the following after lot of time & resources
loss in debugging this issue, not sure whether you got the same issue
that I face.

When favourites.dat corrupted showing 'unknown items', I found that
some of the data folder have their master files missing. If any master.bak
is around, just rename them back to master will fix the issues.

HTH