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[StarVector11]

The seemingly benign 'Export All Playlists' destroyed over 100 GB of files in my D:\Dir\ directory.

I saw it happen with the folder open with my own eyes, while it processed. Oh how nice, I have the playlists that I no longer have time to listen to.

During the process, the Directory was typed in as "D:\Utilities\Applications\J River\Playlists" but the selected 'folder item' in the dialog box was just "D:\Utilities\". I'm not saying that this is expected user behavior, but ...

[RoderickGI]

That's no fun.

I just tested the process quickly, and it seemed to work fine, produced the playlist files and didn't delete anything. I will note that you said you 'typed in as "D:\Utilities\Applications\J River\Playlists"', whereas I think MC expects you to select the target directory using the directory tree it displays. That shouldn't be an issue as long as the target directory existed, but it may result in an unexpected outcome. There is at least one MC process that will not work if you type in the target directory, and you must use the directory tree to select an existing directory. That may have been the "Rename, Move, & Copy File" function.

Regardless, MC "never" deletes media files, unless you tell it to. Is it possible that you accidentally selected all files in that directory and dragged them to a new location without realising it? That is easy to do in Windows, and would result in what you observed, although the files would still exist somewhere on your disk or a connected device. Unless the files were dragged to the Recycle Bin I guess.

Have you searched for the files to see if they are still there somewhere?

Note however, that I have seen Windows allows me to drag or move file to a non-existent directory, and just had them vanish. Once. But I didn't have enough evidence of what really caused the issue, as the PC was playing up a bit at the time.

I hope you have good backups.

[RD James]

Can confirm: Media Center wipes out all data in whatever directory you select to export to rather than being well-behaved and putting them in a subfolder, or even warning the user / asking for confirmation.
It also defaulted to using: %APPDATA%\J River\Media Center 24\Library
 
There are a number of actions in Media Center which should be asking for confirmation (if not twice) which does not.
Any time Media Center is doing more than writing tag changes to files it should be asking for confirmation.
And even then, I would prefer to make tag writing manual, but the current options make that a real hassle to deal with.

[Matt]

We'll add a confirmation message to the next build.  Sorry if you lost anything because of this.

[RD James]

We'll add a confirmation message to the next build.  Sorry if you lost anything because of this.

I feel like automatically writing the files to an \Exported-Playlists\ directory (or similar) rather than replacing the entire directory might be a safer option.

[dtc]

"Export All Playlists" should not delete anything.  A warning is not sufficient.  The option should write the playlists without deleting anything.

[dtc]

There are programs, some free,  that are pretty good at recovering deleted files, as long as you have not done much to the disk since the deletion. If you don't have a backup I would stop other activity on the disk and try one of them.  I have not used one in a while, so do not have any recommendations. Maybe someone else does.

[swiv3d]

Just tested this. Made a folder called playlist on my g: drive and populated with 11 folders containing three gb of music files. Selected export all playlists with G://Playlists selected as the destination from the browse tree. When the playlists are saved they are stored in the requested folder but 10 of the 11 folders of music files disappear and are not in the recycle bin and don't turn up when the drive is searched. So yes, export all playlists does delete files in the folder selected for output.

Edit: On returning to the G://Playlists folder to delete the exported playlists  I find that even the single remaining music folder has vanished too. So Export all playlists does delete everything previously in the slected folder, with no warnings.
I can forsee a gaggle of unhappy MC users if this isn't corrected immediately.

[RoderickGI]

Can confirm: Media Center wipes out all data in whatever directory you select to export to rather than being well-behaved and putting them in a subfolder, or even warning the user / asking for confirmation.
It also defaulted to using: %APPDATA%\J River\Media Center 24\Library

Okay, my testing was a bit too quick, and Windows Explorer hadn't refreshed.

It does delete everything. It does default to the library directory. I had to restore my testing library after running this.

"Export All Playlists" should not delete anything.  A warning is not sufficient.  The option should write the playlists without deleting anything.

I completely agree with this. Why would writing new files to a directory delete everything in there? If a user was updating playlists it should just overwrite any existing ones with the same name, and add new ones. Maybe the intent was to delete all playlist files so as to avoid having Windows overwrite confirmation messages popup, but the effect is pretty disastrous!

[swiv3d]

I see that this problem has been sorted in 24.0.19.  A quick response well done all.

[RD James]

"Export All Playlists" should not delete anything.  A warning is not sufficient.  The option should write the playlists without deleting anything.

Agreed.

That's why I suggested that it could create a specific sub-folder, such as \Exported-Playlists\ in the selected output directory.
It should also not overwrite anything in that folder if it already exists, but that's why it should be something likely to be unique rather than simply \Playlists\
 
Or perhaps the easier solution is to provide an error if the selected directory is not empty, and do not allow playlists to be exported to a directory that already contains files.

[JimH]

In MC 24.0.19, it doesn't delete anything.

[RD James]

In MC 24.0.19, it doesn't delete anything.

My mistake. I saw that a prompt had been added in 24.0.18, but missed that it was then removed in the next version.
I still think that saving to a sub-folder if the current folder is not empty would be a better solution, but at least it is "safe" now.