Workflows missing... Help?

[AuthorsAssembler]

Hi, I recently had to wipe my MacBook 2019's hard drive, and I'm not super clear on how to use Time Machine to go searching for things (and I probably can't given the situation with the hard wipe of my drive). I reinstalled Alfred version 4 something and added back my PowerPack License. All good. And I synced to the Dropbox folder where I have my Alfred.Preferences file.

 

My snippets appeared but a bunch of my newer workflows are missing. I browsed around on my external HD, my Dropbox, my Google Drive, and the backed up hard drive files that I put back on my coomputer. I can't find any other Alfred.Preferences folders that have those missing workflows.

 

Are they gone forever or is there a specific place I should be looking for those? I did look here for them: ~/Library/Application Support and ~/Library/Caches. I found an Alfred folder in Application Support, but I don't really know what to do with that information.

 

I should note that just today I installed the latest Alfred 5 version.

 

Any ideas on what I can do next to troubleshoot this? I made a boatload of new custom workflows fairly recently, and my heart just sunk when I realized they weren't there when I installed Alfred again. Ugh. =(

[vitor]

If you synced your settings to Dropbox, you can recover the files from their website. You might see a bunch of them, because Alfred.alfredpreferences is technically a folder.

[AuthorsAssembler]

Thanks Vitor. I hadn't thought of that. Though, while I can see my Alfred folder in Dropbox and the Alfred.Preferences file within it, I'm unclear on how to get those workflow folders back into AlfredApp. I see "user workflow" folders with usually info.plist files in them, but I honestly have no idea what to do with files like that.

 

Are there instructions on how to reimport such files back into Alfred anywhere? I tried searching but didn't find any info on this specifically.

 

Thanks again!

~Cheri

[vitor]

Are you currently syncing to the old Dropbox location? If so, just restore everything. Once the files are in the old places, Alfred will read them again. Make sure you backup your current Alfred.alfredpreferences first in case you need it.

[AuthorsAssembler]

How do you "restore" exactly? I'm syncing to the only place I recall having synced to in the past, my Dropbox Alfred folder. Basically all I did when I reinstalled Alfred and set everything back up is go to Advanced tab and update my syncing preferences folder in there. Is there more to restoration than that?

[vitor]

8 minutes ago, AuthorsAssembler said:

How do you "restore" exactly?

 

The link above explains the steps.

 

9 minutes ago, AuthorsAssembler said:

go to Advanced tab and update my syncing preferences folder in there.

 

That only tells Alfred where to set the preferences syncing. If you’re missing files, you need to get them from wherever you have backups, be it Dropbox or the Time Machine backups.

[AuthorsAssembler]

If you mean the Dropbox article you linked to about how to restore deleted files, I'm not sure that applies to my situation. My workflows weren't deleted from Dropbox. So when I go into Deleted Files in Dropbox, the workflows I'm trying to find aren't in there.

 

My concern is maybe my newer workflows I'm trying to find maybe were saved somewhere other than in my Dropbox Alfred folder location. That's the only thing I can think of for why they aren't showing up in Alfred with all of my other older workflows.

 

Is there some way I can use Alfred or even Mac Spotlight to do a keyword search for one of the newer workflow files? Like maybe with the name of the actual workflow or the keyword I use to execute the workflow or something like that?

Edited August 17, 2022 by AuthorsAssembler

[AuthorsAssembler]

But even if I somehow find those newer missing workflows, I'm still not clear on how to actually add them back into Alfred. Is it just that I have to take the "user workflow" folders and dump them into the Alfred.Preferences Workflow folder in Dropbox? Is that the correct solution?

[vitor]

Your Workflows are always in Alfred.alfredpreferences (wherever you sync it to), inside a folder called workflows. There you’ll find other folders (each a Workflow) with an info.plist at a minimum.

Alfred.alfredpreferences is a bundle, you can access the contents like an app (right-click → Show Package Contents).

So yes, it seems to be what you got in the last message.