Drawing objects disappeared!

[Stopped]

Hello,

I drew a few things on a chart a few days ago. The chart is linked to a Market Analyzer grid, so that I can draw things on the same chart as the instrument changes. The idea has worked well over the last few days (less than a week) but suddenly some of those drawings have disappeared. Is this expected behaviour?

I was working on the assumption that drawing objects (applied to one chart only, not global ones) would remain there FOREVER (i.e. until I decided to delete them).

What is going on here? Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks,

Stopped

[NinjaTrader_Jason]

Hello Stopped,

Drawing objects in charts are only saved after you saved the workspace. Likely, the objects that disappeared were not saved in your workspace.

If this is not the case, please let me know and tell me what steps result in the disappearance of drawing objects.

[Stopped]

Hi Jason,

I do save the workspace every time I close the application, and sometimes several times during the session.

During a normal session, I would switch instruments by clicking on the corresponding line of Market Analyzer, which is linked with three chart windows (Daily, 240 Min and 60 Min ones). As the charts are loaded, I would update them with drawings, text, etc. and would repeat the process several times during the day. Am I supposed to save the workspace every time before switching to a new instrument? Or is it ok just to save it before closing the session?

Up until now, things I had drawn would remain on the charts when I opened them the following day. However, all of a sudden this morning I realised that the drawings on the Daily chart had all disappeared across all instruments, aaaaarghhh!

Was it my fault (something I did wrong)? Or could it be a software problem?

Thanks,

Stopped

[NinjaTrader_Brett]

Hello,

Unfortunately we would only be trying to point finger where the issue is. Could have been a corrupt workspace, could have been an indicator deleted them, could be they got manually deleted somehow.

I'm not having any other reports to be suspicious of anything at this time as far as trying to chse down a bug or anything like that. I believe this was a one time issue at this point in time.

Therefor, lets keep an eye on it and let me know if it occurs again.

If you have a backup please restore it. If you do not have a backup please do a backup so that if this occurs again we are not completely lost with the drawing objects again.

http://www.ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt7/creating_a_backup_archive.htm

[Stopped]

Hi Brett,

I have lost all but one instance of my drawings again (and I am very annoyed with myself because I had not kept a backup...)

As I explained earlier, the workspace affected has one Market Analyzer grid with a list of instruments and three Charts, with all windows linked to each other.

When I realised I had lost them, I closed the workspace without saving it in the hope that I would only lose the additional drawings that I had added during the last session. However, when I relaunched the application again, I found that the only drawings that had remained were those on the instrument that loads up with the application. When I switched to other instruments all drawings in all three charts were gone.

Just before I lost them, I was "playing around" with the workspace - e.g. reloading the templates on each chart, etc. I had done this in the past and had not had any problems, so I do not think that these actions were the real cause.


As per what you suggested as possible causes of the problem, I think we can discard some of them:

• An indicator should not have deleted them, as I was careful enough to apply each drawing on the Data Series, not the indicators (to avoid them being deleted during the data/chart reload).
• Needless to say, I did not deleted them manually.

So this leaves us with at least the two other possibilities that you mentioned - i.e. either it is a corrupt workspace or a software problem.

At this point, due to my failure to carry out a backup (again), I guess there is little else we can do. However, I wanted to provide a litte bit more light on a behaviour which starts to look a bit suspicious.

I will go back again to updating each of these charts (how painfully annoying!), and will make sure I keep a backup in case this problem arises again.

In the meantime, I would appreciate if you could try and think of any other reason why this may have happened.

Thanks,

Stopped

[NinjaTrader_Jason]

Hello Stopped,

Unfortunately I am not sure what cause you to lose your drawing objects. Did you notice any consistency between the occurrences so far?

I tested changing instruments in charts and applying drawing objects on my end, but so far I am unable to reproduce the issue on my end.

What steps did you perform in NinjaTrader before you lost your drawing objects?

[Stopped]

Hi Jason,

The first time it happened I thought that perhaps it was my fault. This second time I was not so sure.



All I can say at the moment is that over the last couple of weeks I have been working on an existing workspace and doing some repetitive actions, such as:

• Creating and saving Chart Templates as I added new Indicators, deleted others
• Adjusting the window layout (e.g. changing the size of Market Analyzer, etc.)
• Keeping existing Charts up to date (e.g. adding a trend line here, adjusting another one there)

I can't see how any of these actions may have caused the deletion of those drawings.

Also, I have been careful to save the workspace regularly during any session and every time I exited the application.

While working on a chart, sometimes I changed the period to gain perspective only to revert back to the original one (e.g. Daily) and apply the drawing objects there.

Whenever I shrunk the X-axis to see more data, I would reload the saved Chart template to revert to the original settings. I have not seen this being a problem either.

I have recently been a bit more liberal in the way I draw lines, and I have been switching the "Snap Mode" feature from "Bar and Price" to "Disabled" at my convenience. This did not seem to affect the saving of the drawings either.

Right now I am at a loss on what can be causing this problem, and I am not expecting you to be able to reproduce it.

I will keep an eye on this behaviour and will keep backups in case this happens again so that you will have more info to try and reproduce on your end.

If you think that any of my actions (e.g. reloading chart templates, switching periods, etc.) could cause this problem please let me know.

Thanks,

Stopped

[NinjaTrader_Jason]

Hello Stopped,

I do not see how your actions are causing drawing objects to be deleted either.

Sounds good, please let me know if the issue recurs and let me know what actions were performed in NinjaTrader prior.

[Stopped]

One additional clarification please: When using the "Remove Drawing Objects" function and applying "Select All", it should delete all the drawings on that chart affecting that particular instrument, right? But it should not affect the drawings on that chart previously applied on different instruments, should it? Therefore, if after doing this I change the instrument I should get previously applied drawings on this instrument, shouldn't I? Thanks.

[NinjaTrader_Jason]

You are correct. 'Remove Drawing Objects' will remove all objects for the instrument that is selected in your chart. It will not remove drawing objects that you applied prior in other instruments in the same chart.

[Stopped]

Hello,

Brett suggested that I should be doing regular backups, but they are taking ages each time - as I am backing up everything.

Which items do I really need to back up on a daily basis in order to save my chart drawings to restore them when needed and to investigate this issue in the future if necessary? Does a backup of "Workspaces" and "Log and Traces" suffice?

Thanks,

Stopped

[NinjaTrader_Kyle]

Hi Stopped,

A backup of workspaces and log and trace files should satisfy your conditions.

[Stopped]

Hi there,

I have had this problem again. This time I had been keeping backups of my workspace and the trace log, so hopefully I should be able to restore the charts to yesterday's point. What would you like me to do? Do I need to send you trace files for you to investigate?

To recap what happened:

• I was on the first chart of my workspace, which typically holds Daily data,
• Then switched to Monthly to gain perspective and later moved to Weekly.
• Zoomed in and drew new lines, then switched to Daily without zooming out
• Then reloaded "Daily" chart template to get preferred visualization settings
• Switched to a new instrument using Market Analyzer
• At that point I realised I had lost all the drawings on that particular chart affecting all instruments except the one which I had been handling all those actions upon

Can I restore my workspace using one of my backups while you investigate?

Please advise asap.

Stopped

[NinjaTrader_Jason]

Hello Stopped,

Yes, can you please restore your backup file that contains your workspaces and check if it will restore your charts with the drawing tools. It will restore your workspace the way you saved it when creating the backup file.

I will investigate your steps in the mean time.

[NinjaTrader_Jason]

Could it be the '"Daily" chart template causes the Y-axis to shrink which subsequently causes the drawing objects to disappear in the chart? Please click and hold your left mouse button on the right side of the Y-axis and move downwards. Check if you see your drawing objects.

I tested the steps you included on my end, however it did not cause drawing objects to disappear for other instruments. Did you perhaps restarted NinjaTrader in between the steps you mention?