JMP Keeps Reverting to the JMP Application Folder when Saving

[#1]

OK, so this just cropped up this evening and it is seriously putting the brakes on my workflow. I had just completed working with a data set yesterday and up to that point I had no issues. Now I am dealing with a different, but similar data set, and JMP has begun behaving weird when I attempt to save graphs. Depending on what subset of the data I am dealing with, I have a folder hierarchy set up for storing graphs generated from JMP. My workflow is,

• Export a graph from a report or Graph Builder into the associated folder as an SVG file.
• Open the SVG file in Affinity Designer to clean up the graph; for some strange reason, when exporting to SVG, the graphs will include the graph elements toolbar from Graph Builder or the collapsable headers from reports.
• Export the corrected SVG replacing the copy generated from JMP.
• Add the graph to a worksheet in an Excel summary workbook; most people in our company do not use JMP, so distributing journals is not an option.

The problem that arose this evening is that when I attempt to save a graph, the path shown in the Save Report As dialog box is correct, but after I save the graph and attempt to open it in Affinity Designer, it is not in the directory to which it was saved. I have confirmed in both Finder and Windows Explorer that the file does not exist where it should have been saved. (Note: I checked both file managers, as I run JMP in a Windows virtual machine on a Mac and have never had any such problem prior to tonight in the 4+ years that I have worked in this way.) I spent a considerable amount of time racking my brain trying to figure out why JMP was suddenly not saving graphs after 3+ months of doing so hundreds of times for two reports as well as the project on which I am currently working.

I quit JMP and relaunched it. No resolution. I restarted Windows. No resolution. Then I noticed something: the first time I attempted to save I would select the path and the file was not saved in the selected directory, but when I reopened the Save Report As dialog, I saw that the path was This PC › Local Disk (C:) › Program Files › SAS › JMP › 14. When I looked at the contents of that folder in Windows Explorer, there indeed were the graphs I saved. As I have the Mac version of Affinity Designer, I cannot access files on the virtual C drive—Windows standard folders (e.g., Desktop, Downloads, Documents, and Pictures) are mapped to their Mac equivalents, so by default, nothing I save should be saved to a virtual drive that only Windows can see—, so I have to move the files to a folder that is mapped to macOS.

Up until tonight, JMP has behaved as expected when saving graphs and the Save Report As dialog behaved as expected: the folder last used was always pointed to by default and if I changed the folder that was where the file was placed. Now I have to go through the hassle of using Windows Explorer to copy the graph from the JMP 14 application folder so that I can open the graph in Affinity Designer—files cannot be moved from the application folder, a location to which no user should be able save anything—, and then delete the copy in the JMP application folder.

Any ideas on why JMP keeps forcing saves to its application folder?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Has your default save as directory somehow been reset to default in the preferences?
Look at File > Preferences > File locations. And try to set the Save As directory to the one you want to see if that will fix the problem.

[#3]

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@ledi_trutna wrote:
Has your default save as directory somehow been reset to default in the preferences?
Look at File > Preferences > File locations. And try to set the Save As directory to the one you want to see if that will fix the problem.

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Interestingly enough, the opposite of what you suggested seemed to work and now that I think about it I know what happened, but it should not have caused what resulted.

I have had an issue since JMP 13, if not in the latter months of JMP 12, with JMP Help not working (Help › JMP Help [F1]). Everything else in the Help menu works as expected, but for whatever reason, the primary help link does not work. That has never been a big deal, as the application Help folder (C:\Program Files\SAS\JMP\14\Help) is a local website, so I just have a bookmark set up each time I upgrade JMP I just copy that folder from the Windows VM to the root level of the Documents folder in macOS. Whenever I am doing heavy lifting in JMP, I keep a tab linked JMP Help active in Safari.

I was looking at something else in JMP Preferences and inadvertently clicked File Locations. Normally, I do not set anything in the File Locations Preference pane, and by default the only pre-defined path is the Installation directory (C:\Program Files\SAS\JMP\14); everything else is blank. I set the Help Files directory to point to C:\Program Files\SAS\JMP\14\Help to no avail. If I recall correctly, that was a solution offered up when I first started having issues with JMP Help years ago to no avail. Although at that time there were no ill effects from setting that path.

I did not touch the Save As directory path yesterday, so it was the furthest thing from my mind. After I saw your response, I went to the File Location preferences and clicked Reset to Defaults. I then exported SVGs from the Distribution platform to different folders and all seems to be back to normal.