Moho Forum

I am currently experincing a very anoying problem in Moho 12.4 for Win 10: when I am saving changes made to a project using "save" the changes does not save.
When I then try to use "save as..." Moho sometimes says something like "you're trying to overwrite a file that is open or to a drive that is write protected".
If I exit Moho and enter the given folder and try to delete the 'locked' files, Windows says
"File In Use. The action can't be completed because the file is open in COM surrogate".
The only way to free the files is to restart Windows. This is a rather cumbersome procedure to go through, just to save a file!!
The only way to safely save is to give the file a new name (or number) for every and each time I save.
I haven't had this problem in any other software than Moho 12.4.
Can anybody help?

PS I have autosave turned off

sadly this is a known and reported error. Still waiting for a fix.

see also http://lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=30628 and http://lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 4&p=154543

Thanks a lot for the answer!
Sad that this is a known bug. I assume that it is reported to Smith Micro? But it seems that we will have to be waiting a long time for a fix! First time reported apparently is several years ago!
And development and bugfixing in general seems to be grinding to a halt as it is...

Tore wrote: ... I assume that it is reported to Smith Micro?

yes - but relatively recently - 39501 for anyone who cares about such numbers. The threads do give a couple of workarounds. My own preference is to go to the file's directory and rename the original as (e.g.) xxxOLD.moho then save - but there are other ways.

Tore wrote:And development and bugfixing in general seems to be grinding to a halt as it is...

there are encouraging noises about further developments - http://lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 13#p182513 …

Odd, I was just experiencing this exact same problem. So anyway, the solution, if people don't want to go searching the link, is Ctrl+Alt+Delete on the keyboard to bring up the task manager, then search the Processes list for COM Surrogate, select and then press the End task button. You'll then be able to save the Moho file as normal. That way you don't have to create new files every time you want to save.

Thanks djwaterman. Maybe that will solve it. But I'm not completely sure. As mentioned, I have experienced to save without the file actually being saved, and without Moho coming with any indications that the save hasn't been executed.
I guess that until Moho has been thorougly checked and repaired for it's save anomalies, the only safe thing to do is to stay completely away from "save" and only use "save as..." and give a new number/name for each save. Then when the work session is completed one can delete all files except the last saved.
Very, very awkward, to say the least, but at least safe.
I have, by the way tried to turn of document preview thumbnails in preferences, but Moho keeps saving files (also new ones, with new names) with thumbnails regardless. Yet another thing in the save complex that need to be looked at.

Has anyone tested this problem with "No Thumbnails" selected in the preferences?

EDIT: No, COM Surrogate still shows up.

Jeremy Jones made an excellent iterate save script.
I can't remember where he posted it.
Here it is with a slight modification, I changed the 'backup' folder name to 'archive', just to work with my pipeline.
It moves the last save to the folder and then saves the current file to the original file with the original name( nice and fresh only the backup get incremental numbers which is good for consistent render file names).
https://1drv.ms/u/s!An9E1CVuSl-zgcgOsDngCAY0EoeUiQ

I remember revealing the answer on that link years ago, sorry to see it's still a problem.
I always meant that to be an example of a work around... but not an end all be all fix.
Also, Imma just say it, whispering or not, everyone is pretty much convinced this program is dead, Smith Micro has no idea where to go with it, and they don't seem to really care. That bothers me, because i use it every single day... They need to either get off their butts and say something, or they're gonna start (if not already) losing people to other programs. I used to work for a certain beta program myself, and you guys who keep saying there are whispers of hope, are just teasing those who happen to want genuine information on stupid problems like this, that should have been fixed not even a month after they started happening...
Either give us some news on it, or shut up and fix the problem, Smith Micro...

Moho is fine, they are just between releases.
The development team has changed, yes.
We loved the old team, but the new team deserves a fair shake of the sauce bottle.
It has been publicly revealed that dev is in progress, more than that , I can't reveal...
You can rest assured.

By the way: thanks, Chucky for the jjsave script! When I got it to run (a tools folder was missing in the structure) it seems to work perfectly!

That's great Tore.
I'd like to now if it saves more than ten backups for you.
If it stops at 10 maybe it needs a little patch.
Special thanks to Jez Jones for that script though, it's pretty great Eh?

Well it was too good to be true!
After having tried the script a couple of times, the saving goes bad again. Moho says (as before) "The document wasn't saved properly" but shortly after the jjscript says "Saved and backup made".
Checking the file content verifies that the file has NOT been saved, but the script has made a copy of the (original) file, named it *_3 and put it in the archive folder.
(See the screen dump)

Back to square one. Somewhat desperate.

That's odd , just tested it a gain , works great.

chucky, here's the link:
https://www.animestudiotutor.com/script ... ps_script/
I've updated the script to fix two bugs a few weeks back.

I wasn't aware of this 'COM surrogate' bug and haven't experienced it, even though I use Moho a lot on Windows and Mac. Lets hope Smith Micro fix it soon.