Recover Rules After Re-Install?

Hello,

I recently ran into an issue with Hazel that would not allow me to load it via System Preferences. I had to erase and re-install the app to get it to launch and unfortunately lost all my rules. I did, however, keep the preferences files and such, but for some reason can't get all my old rules to show up... I only get a few. And if I add too many of the old files, I run into the not loading issue again. So my question is: What files do I have to load to get my rules back and where should I install them?

Thanks so much!

Joe

First off, as a general rule, never uninstall Hazel unless you don't plan on using it anymore. If there is a problem, please contact support first.

If you haven't emptied the trash, you may find your rules there from the uninstall (look in a Hazel folder in the trash). They have a .hazelrules extension. You can try dragging those back into Hazel to import them. It won't be obvious from the file names which folder they belong to so just drag them into any folder and then drag the rules to the right folder once you see what they are.

I'm not sure what other preference files you are referring to and how you are adding them. Most of the preferences are easily constructed so it might be better just to do that manually instead of playing with the config files directly.

Also, are you using Time Machine? If so, check an old version of your Library/Application Support/Hazel folder. Again, follow the instructions above for importing.

If you don't have any backups and they aren't in the trash then unfortunately, I think they are lost.

I accidentally deleted rules due to a folder bug I reported here elsewhere (Hazel kept reporting a folder as missing, so I re-added the folder and it showed up 3x in the list; I deleted the one with the rules attached).

Anyways, I need to get those rules back and while I see nothing related to Hazel in the Trash, I do run Time Machine but have no idea which of the 1,800+ files I should be looking to for the backup.

If you check the aforementioned folder in Time Machine, there will be some files with the .hazelrules extension. Unfortunately, they use a naming scheme that is not obvious. If you know when you lost the rules, then go to that time in Time Machine and see which file disappeared, if possible. Otherwise, you can create a new folder and add it to Hazel and then drag those files in to see what rules are in them.

Mr_Noodle wrote:If you check the aforementioned folder in Time Machine, there will be some files with the .hazelrules extension. Unfortunately, they use a naming scheme that is not obvious. If you know when you lost the rules, then go to that time in Time Machine and see which file disappeared, if possible. Otherwise, you can create a new folder and add it to Hazel and then drag those files in to see what rules are in them.

I did that but it seemed like 20+ files were different, so I just recreated the rules from scratch.