Module 3 · Level 1 · 10 min
Conflicts, trash, and “my library is empty”
Start with the answer: an empty library is almost never lost maps. Below are the four situations that scare people, what each one actually is, and the click that ends it.
“I opened TabTree and everything is gone”
You are looking at a different shelf. A browser keeps a separate library per address, so a new browser, a new profile, a second machine or the downloaded file all start empty — that is expected, not a failure.
Two ways back, both instant:
- Click ♻️ Restore — “rebuild the library from a backup folder” — and point it at your folder. The whole library is adopted automatically.
- Or use the “I already have maps” card, which any empty library offers you.
“There are two copies of the same map”
You edited it in two places before the drive had finished syncing. TabTree does not pick
a winner and does not overwrite: you get both versions side by side, the second one
named … (folder copy).
Open both, keep the one you want, and merge by hand if the two both moved forward. Then delete the other — a deletion here is safe, see below.
Preventing it is the same one line as everything else: let the drive finish before you edit somewhere else.
“I deleted a map I needed”
The map's file is kept in the folder's Corbeille/ — the trash. Open it in
your file manager, move the .tabtree file back out, and TabTree picks it up.
“A map I deleted came back”
Not a bug, and worth knowing the rule behind it: an edit always beats a deletion. If you changed that map on another machine after deleting it here, the edited version survives and travels back to you.
The reasoning is the one that protects you the other 99 % of the time: between “lose work someone just did” and “see a map you thought was gone”, only the second one is recoverable. Delete it again once both machines have caught up.
| What happened | What wins |
|---|---|
| Edited here, deleted elsewhere | The edit |
| Deleted here, edited elsewhere | The edit |
| Edited in both places | Both — the second becomes (folder copy) |
| Deleted in both places | The deletion, and the file waits in Corbeille/ |
The one message that means “everything is fine”
When TabTree starts, and each time you come back to its window, it catches up with the folder and tells you: 🛟 1 map(s) updated from the folder
Seeing that toast after editing on another machine is the proof that the round trip works. If you never see it, the two machines are not looking at the same folder — the most common cause is a folder created beside the synced drive rather than inside it.
Your turn — break it on purpose
Take a throwaway map. Edit it on machine A and, before the drive catches up, edit the
same map on machine B. Let both sync, and watch the (folder copy) appear.
Doing it once, deliberately, on a map you do not care about is worth more than reading this page twice. You will recognise it instantly the day it happens to a map you do care about.