How does Paratext store duplicate short project names?

Question

Since Paratext stores each project in a folder with the project short name, what happens if there are two projects with the same short project name (NBT)?

Someone contacted me with this situation:
They wanted to access some files in the PT folder for project1 (NBT), but the NBT folder contained project 2 (NBT).
They used Paratext to delete project 2 (NBT), but they are unable to find the folder for project 1 (NBT).
They can open Project 1 (NBT), but the NBT folder does not exist. Restarting PT did not change anything.

Answer 1

My recent experience with two projects with the same short project name wasn't a good one! Although it is possible to register the second project with an identical short project name, if a user is wanting to S/R both projects, it doesn't work. The only solution is to change the short project name of one of the projects - and this is possible even after registering / working on a project.

I believe that when S/R is used for one of the identically named projects, on the local machine the data is synchronised in the folder with that short name. When S/R is used for the other project, then that same folder is used. I'm guessing that either files are overwritten or else, if a different set of files exist in the two projects, then files from both projects might be contained within the folder.

I presume the data for the two projects on the server should be separate as each registration has a unique ID.

For your situation, I don't understand how the team can open Project 1 but not see the folder on the local machine. If they make a change (add a space, delete the space) and then save, what happens? Can they find a changed file on the local machine?

Answer 2

If a machine has two projects with the same short name, one will be in the normal folder and the other will be in a folder named: _projectsById

All projects have a unique id and the project files in this folder will have the unique id added to the short name.

There is still a restriction on the Paratext registry to prohibit a user from being added to two projects with the same short name because not all versions of Paratext support different projects having the same short name. But since not all projects need to be registered for S/R, there are still ways for a user to get on two projects with the same short name.

Comments

What is full path for the _projectsById folder?

And is that the exact name "_projectsById"?

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The full path will be: C:\My Paratext 9 Projects\_projectsById

Within this folder will be the project folders with names like "ABC_d2243c856ff91df7c88ab8ddee013a59e8e9480d"