• close all projects in Tropy
• then download the latest version of the project
• make sure it’s fully downloaded: for testing I’d move it out of a location controlled by Google Drive, look at it in Windows Explorer to ensure it’s all there (the project.tpy file and the assets folder with your images)
• when you’re sure it’s all there, open this project by double-clicking on the project.tpy file (this way you can be sure that Tropy opens this version of the project)
• make sure the project works
• if there are any errors in the previous step, select Help → Show log files from the menu and make a copy of the tropy.log file so you can post it here
• if there are no errors and the project is the most recent version, close it, remove the timestamp from the name, and move it back to your Google Drive
• then double-click on the project.tpy file again to open it in Tropy and just close it again (this way, the next time you open Tropy it will open the project at this location)
• before opening the project on a different device always make sure it’s fully synced and that it is not open in Tropy on another device already.

Tropy is already a great tool with a good balance between simplicity and powerful metadata customization. It’s especially useful for people studying art history who need to manage large numbers of images.

Thank you for the great work! I would also love to see hierarchical tags in the future, similar to the list structure.

If you want to access the Drive file with the folders, we saved the file this way and then downloaded it.

Regarding the macOS error: can you check if ~/Library/Logs exists? This is a system folder that should exist, if it was removed it can cause Tropy to fail with this error.

Now we run the process of encoding the images using Tropy itself, and it says that the images were encoded, but they still remain without encoding.

I use the mechanism that Tropy provides to encode the images by document or to encode all the files that exist inside the program, and even so some images are not encoded.

Another point we would like to mention regarding our questions: we are trying to open Tropy on a Mac, but it keeps showing an error. The image attached shows the error message that appears when we try to install it.

The error message is also written below. :

Error: Failed to get ‘logs’ path
at file:///Applications/Tropy.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/lib/main/index.js:24684:30
at ModuleJob.run (node:internal/modules/esm/module_job:343:25)
at async onImport.tracePromise.proto (node:internal/modules/esm/loader:665:26)
at async node:electron/js2c/browser_init:2:135662
at async asyncRunEntryPointWithESMLoader (node:internal/modules/run_main:132:5)

Could you make a screenshot of the prompt about encoding/re-indexing? Or any of the errors that start appearing. And ideally, save the log file after it happens, because it might offer more clues. If it happens consistently, I would assume that the project database file has been corrupted. This can often happen due to sync conflicts in Google Drive in combination with having the project open in Tropy (though this should never happen in your workflow). In any case, if you could provide screenshots or logs of the error we should be able to say more. Otherwise you can also share the project.tpy file with us and we can take a look.

I would like to request assistance regarding an issue we have been experiencing while using Tropy to organize a digital archive of documents in our project.

Currently, we work on two different computers. To ensure the safety of our data, whenever we finish a work session we save the Tropy project to Google Drive so that we have a backup copy. When necessary, we download this file on either computer to continue working on the project.

For approximately one year, this workflow worked without any problems. However, after some recent updates to the software, we started experiencing difficulties when opening the project files. Whenever we download the file and attempt to open it, the system asks to perform an encoding/reindexing process. During this process, errors begin to appear and the project cannot be opened correctly.

We would like to understand what might be causing this problem, as Tropy has been an extremely important tool for organizing our archive. At this point, we already have a significant amount of documents cataloged in the project, and we are concerned about the possibility of losing this information.

Therefore, we would appreciate your guidance on how to resolve this encoding issue and what would be the safest way to work with the same project on two different computers without risking data corruption.

Thank you in advance for your attention, and we look forward to your guidance.

Best regards.

That said, you may still need a template for some of the metadata fields, but judging by the example above the labels used seem to match Dublin Core terms so I think most of it should import just fine.

While getting these manifests to show me the images is great, there is a lot of metadata (like creator, description, etc) that is not going into the correct categories when I import using Tropy generic, Dublin Core, or Tropy photo templates. Do I need to make my own template? Modify the files before importing them? I’ve tried using both the IIIF 1.3.0 and 2.0.0 plugin (pre-release), messing with the settings on each and finding the 2.0.0 version more likely to actually get the images to load, but same lack of metadata still happens.

I’m sure there’s a smoother, faster workflow that what I am currently attempting and could use some advice. It seems like I am so close to being able to import with all of the data that’s already there attached… but keep coming up short. Thanks for any and all advice.

The export templates maps each field to its label. When exporting, the plugin will go through these fields one by one and map the corresponding value. If you use the same label more than once then the second occurrence can overwrite the first one. So maybe that’s what’s happening here. It can be tricky to use a single template to cover multiple different mappings. One way around this is to use multiple templates and multiple plugin configurations. You can use the + Icon next to the plugin configuration to create a new one and use the name fields to distinguish between them. The name will show up in the export context menu so you could have, e.g. Export → Zotero Artwork Zotero Book and so on.

This results in the two attached files…

export_Zotero_with_Extent.json (1.3 KB)

export_Zotero_with_format.json (1.3 KB)

from_tropy_to_Zotero_01.json (3.7 KB)
from_tropy_to_Zotero_02.json (3.7 KB)

{“msg”:“Failed to import item.”,“stack”:“Error: image type not supported: undefined\n at Image.parse (file:///C:/Users/joeyv/AppData/Local/tropy/app-1.17.3/resources/app.asar/lib/project-B-ZZt6Yl.js:61522:13)\n at async Image.open (file:///C:/Users/joeyv/AppData/Local/tropy/app-1.17.3/resources/app.asar/lib/project-B-ZZt6Yl.js:61512:5)”,“system”:“Windows_NT 10.0.26200 (x64)”,“time”:1772578408240,“version”:“1.17.3”}

I’m using the Tropy CSL export (tropy-plugin-csl) to send items to Zotero. I’m trying to populate the “Dimensions / Artwork Size” field in Zotero for illustration-type records.

What I’m seeing

• The CSL-JSON export produced by Tropy contains the field “dimensions” .
• The item is exported as “type: “graphic”” and includes e.g. “dimensions: “L 32 mm × l 28 mm × ép. 6 mm”” (real example from my export).
• After importing the CSL-JSON into Zotero, the item ends up as Item Type: Artwork , but the “Artwork Size / Dimensions” field remains empty.

Expectation
Since Zotero’s Artwork “Artwork Size” is mapped to CSL “dimensions” , I expected the value to appear there after import.

Question
Is this a known limitation/bug (either in the Tropy exporter or in Zotero’s CSL-JSON importer), or is there a recommended way to encode dimensions so that Zotero reliably fills “Artwork Size” for Artwork items?

Extra context / checks

• I verified that the JSON actually contains “dimensions” and the CSL type is “graphic” .
• I can share a minimal CSL-JSON sample if that helps for debugging.

Thanks in advance for any guidance, and happy to test a fix or adjust my template if there’s a best practice.

Best regards,
Antonio Mendes da Silva

If you have an average screen, you only see about 20 lists at once, so you need to scroll quite a bit just to find all the lists an object belongs to. And if your list are organized in a hierarchical manner, you need to completely unfold your list structure to see the indicator.

It would be very helpful to have another tab within an objects details that presents all the lists an object belongs to. Thank you for considering this for a future update.

By itself the error above usually means that Tropy is trying to open the wrong file. But the log file will hopefully tell us more.

I can see my Tropy folders in my Mac finder, and I absolutely have to get them back! I’m a PhD student and all of my data is on them. PLEASE HELP TROPY WIZARDS!

Just style.css works, so my question is, if you merged dark and light theme to use now the same css file (style.css) to apply both themes?

Testing portable project files Announcements

Yes! You can now use the project preferences to achieve the same thing: linking photos relative to the project file is equivalent to what the ‘rebase project’ command used to do.

since it’s been 7 years since the initial entry and Tropy has evolved, I wanted to kindly ask for an updated 2026 version of this feature article? Especially regarding the template issue/topic mentioned in 2019, which is kind of confusing me, has there been some development?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Cheers,
Julian

Improving the drag and drop outside of the app is also a good idea, thank you! We’ll take that into consideration (it’s more complicated because of differences between the platforms).

Also very useful would be the ability to drag-and-drop an image in Tropy onto other apps. E.g., if I want to include an archival photo in a research talk, I’d love to be able to just pull up the image in Tropy and drop it onto a Keynote or PPT slide.

Thanks for considering!

Greg

How big is the backup file you have? And is the file only empty or does it say it is malformed/corrupted? With 334 KB there’s certainly something in the file. If you can share it with us we can take a look to see if it’s possible to tell what happened.

to hide all the metadata in PDFs go to Preferences > Settings > Print and uncheck Include metadata.

I am trying to hid all of the metadata (the item, photo, and notes metadata) and have the pdf be a full page.

I tried the style.css sheet you shared in May 2023, but it only removes photo metadata.

Could you share a style.css that removes ALL the metadata?

Many thanks.