Fritzing claims parts loaded to bins already but parts can't be found

I am using Fritzing on a Mac and I imported over some Adafruit parts. I go and find parts and I can’t find the wanted parts. I probably forgot to save the parts but Fritzing won’t let me reimport the files! What do I do?

First thing I’d suggest is try parts search in case the parts are in an odd bin somewhere (search should find them in any bin) since Fritzing thinks they are present. If that doesn’t help, things are likely more painful, in that the user directories are probably corrupt (parts got only partly deleted). If you have only a few custom parts (and/or have them backed up outside Fritzing which is wise), then clearing the user directories should do the trick:

There are two user directories (with your parts and the parts database) which don’t get touched during an install (to not affect your sketches during upgrades). On Windows they are in

c:\users\username\AppData\Fritzing\roaming\Fritzing (which is a hidden directory so you need to enable hidden directories in explorer) and

c:\Users\username\My Documents\Fritzing (where username is your windows id)

If you don’t have any parts or sketches you want to keep you can just delete those two directories and Fritzing will recreate them, or you can move them aside by renaming them if you wan to keep something in them.

linux

~/Documents/Fritzing/parts
~/.config/Fritzing

Mac

/Users/username/Documents/Fritzing/parts
~/.config/Fritzing

If you have a lot of parts and don’t want to reset the directories, you can take a backup copy of the directories (for safety) then edit the directories and search for the file names of the affected parts (it should tell you the file name when it says the part is already loaded.) If you delete the files the problem should clear unless the internal database has been corrupted (in which case try a database rebuild via Parts->regenerate parts database to see if that helps (and/or post for more advise, preferably with directory listing of the user files.) Fritzing will use whatever directories are present, so you can copy the backup copies in to position to get back to where you are now if things go wrong (as long as you keep backup copies.) Good luck!

Peter

Hey Peter, I just saw your post and so yesterday(when I posted the topic) I tried searching for parts and I coudn’t find the parts so no, they aren’t in a wacky bin. I’ll try what you say.

EDIT: It works! Thanks!