"Tool requested to run is not found" Error Message

[David.P]

O.k. so now I just OCR'ed 15 documents simultaneously via context menu.

This worked very well, even though my computer was at 100% CPU load for 10 minutes because the process opened 15 little instances of PDF Tools like this one:

image(1).png

(It would probably be better if the documents were handled sequentially instead of simultaneously. Can I set this somewhere in PDF Tools?)

Anyway, I now wanted to OCR further documents with PDF Tools via context menu.

However, now I get the error message "Tool requested to run is not found".

image.png

When I open PDF Tools, the tool is actually no longer there. How is this possible, and where can I find the tool now?

In other words, where does PDF Tools store custom tools (and their settings)?

I had created the tool by cloning the "OCR Pages" tool, then renamed the clone and changed its settings.

Best regards
David

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, David.P

If you uncheck these two options for the tool, it should use notable less CPU, and only process one file at a time. Do note that disabling batch processing mode on tools with merge actions can cause that action to fail.

image.png

As for the tool disappearing. This is would mean that either Tools crashed processing one of your files, and because you hadn't closed tools since creating it, it was not written to the registry like normal, or it if you have closed the software at least once since creating the tool, it could be that your security software noticed the registry change and deemed it unnecessary, the cleaned it our recently.

Do you recall any moment when PDF-Tools crashed? if it had the CPU at 100% for a long period of time, it may have been a system related issue, but I am curious to know if you can reproduce it after disabling these options.

Kind regards,

[David.P]

Thank you Daniel.

As far as I know, PDF Tools has not crashed. However, I had opened it once while the OCR processing described above was still running in the background.

Already at that point, the OCR tool in question was no longer present.

Please note that I'm running PDF-Tools "portable", since I can't install any programs on my laptop (I have simply copied the PDF-Tools program folder from my main PC to the laptop).

Would PDF-Tools still store my tools and their settings in the registry?

I had already created the OCR tool in question yesterday in PDF-Tools.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, David.P

To be quite honest, as running Tools "portable" is not the intended way to use it, I cannot say with any certainty where, if, or how it would store your custom tools.... It is not explored territory or a supported way of using the app, and not something I have any experience with. I will ask the dev team what may happen in this case, but I suspect that the issue you are seeing could be related to this.

Kind regards,

[David.P]

Never mind Daniel,

If you could maybe tell me where (e.g. in the Registry?) the installed version saves custom Tools and settings, I will look that up on my laptop.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, David.P

They should appear in the registry under:
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Tracker Software\PDFXTools\8.0\Settings\CustomTools

Kind regards,

[Vladimir G - Tracker Dev]

Hello, David.P

I cannot reproduce your issue with the disappearing tool for now, but I have some remarks about your flow.

What version of PDF-Tools are you using? If your version is not the newest, please, update it if possible, because some related issue was fixed in the latest build.

the process opened 15 little instances of PDF Tools like this one

The reason for running a new instance of PDF-Tools for each file is in the way that you have created a shell shortcut.
Windows will run a new instance of each selected file, I've found a solution for running a tool for all files in the directory but have not found the same for all selected files. But still, PDFTools were not designed to be executed as a portable application and there might be other issues with such shell menu hacks.

Best regards,

[David.P]

Thank you Daniel and Vladimir.

I shall check on what you mentioned.

Another related question about PDF-Tools please:

When batch OCR'ing a folder with many PDF files: is it true that PDF Tools does not save any of the files until all of them are processed?

I get a lot of messages in PDF-Tools that "OCR has been started" for many files, but no message that OCR has finished:

image.png

Also, I can't see with any of the PDF files in Windows Explorer that it has already been OCR'ed.

[Vladimir G - Tracker Dev]

David.P,

Yes, you are correct. When both 'Batch Processing Mode' and 'Multi-Threaded Processing Mode' are enabled, PDF-Tools does not save any documents until all of them have been processed.

However, for OCR-ing documents alone, it is not necessary to have Batch Processing mode enabled. To improve performance, you can try disabling 'Batch Processing Mode', keeping 'Multi-Threaded Mode' enabled, and selecting "No" for the 'Keep Order' tool's option (if the saving order doesn't matter).

Screenshot_2.png

Screenshot_3.png

Once you have set these options, the document will be immediately passed to the "Save Documents" action after it has been processed by the OCR action.

Best regards,

[David.P]

Thanks Vladimir, awesome

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

[Jensen Head]

"Tool requested to run is not found" Error Message

I get this message after doing the following:

1. On computer No. 1 with Windows 10, I export the PDF-Tools settings to a .pdts file.
2. On computer No. 2 with Windows 10, I uninstall a slightly outdated version of PDF-Tools.
3. On computer No. 2, I install the current version of PDF-Tools in a folder other than the default.
4. I import the settings from the file created in step 1.
5. Using the context menu “Process in PDF Tools...” I try to process the documents as I did previously on both computers.
6. 2024-01-24_15-37-37.png

At the same time, in the PDF-Tools application itself, the "Shell Menu" menu is empty.

In the Menu.json file I see four items:

1. Create PDF from Images (eng)
2. Create PDF from Images (eng, rus)
3. Create PDF from Images (rus)
4. Sanitize Document

However, in [HKCU\SOFTWARE\Tracker Software\PDFXTools\8.0\Settings\CustomTools] I see:

1. Create PDF from Images (eng)
2. Create PDF from Images (eng, rus)
3. Create PDF from Images (rus)
4. Images 2 TIFF
5. Images to TIFF

Thus, firstly, I state that after deleting an application, dead tails of the application remain in the system registry. And that's not very good. [strk]Secondly, the imported PDF-Tools settings do not overwrite the old settings, but work incrementally, and this is also not good.[/strk] (When importing, I did not pay attention to the "Merge Shell Menu tools" checkbox. I needed to uncheck it.) Finally, thirdly, in some situations the settings of PDF-Tools are not imported completely.

Upd. Also, it’s strange that the registry branch refers to version 8.0, although I’ve been updating the application every few months for several years now. Now I'm working in PDF-Tools 10.2.1, build 385 (Enhanced OCR) (Jan 22 2024; 14:48:39).

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, Jensen Head

Regarding your 3 points at the bottom here,
1. we intentionally retain the registry between installations for our products, that is because this is where we store your application settings, custom tools, and the like.
2. seems you sorted this one out.
3. the most likely case for this I can see is possibly related to the error you are seeing above. In some cases, Tools could be unable to write the settings (including imported tools and their names) to the registry until an application restart.

In light of the statement in point 3, I would like to ask, if you perform the import you reported at the start, and then restart Tools before trying to perform any other actions (ensure it is not hiding in the system tray either), do you still see that same error message, or does it disappear?

Kind regards,

[Jensen Head]

I solved the problem by manually deleting all registry entries associated with the PDF-Tools task list in the Microsoft File Explorer context menu and re-importing the settings. After this, the same list of tasks began to be displayed in the application interface, in the registry, and in File Explorer. Which is exactly what I needed.

[Dimitar - Tracker Supp]