'Select All' takes a long time... basically forever on a large list Topic is solved

[JonR]

Hi, Of course day to day use of TDL is sublime as it always has been. However recently I have been tempting fate by letting my lists grow quite large, ~5k items. Noticeable performance reduction seems to be increasing over time. And I tend to have a bunch of lists open at the same time.

Recently using select-all (i.e. the entire list) became so slow I decided to investigate - by playing with display of the attribute table (all fields off), testing small lists, killing all the custom attributes* etc. I turned on the log feature and tested a small anonymised file. Some changes seemed to help. I even reset the ini to 'new user' and that did seem to help also.

But none of these things were enough to 'display all' one of my big files (in list view). After 12mins of waiting with processor at 12% I just force closed the app.

I also looked at Windows performance, restarting the pc, closing other apps, trying as Administrator, looking at memory, processor, conflicting processes. Nothing obvious jumps out. But I am always suspicious of Win10 'antimalware' & 'desktop window manager', and recently regularly get cxUIUsvc hogging the processor for some bizarre reason.

So my question to the forum (Dan!) is - Is there a trick to this? or is the only solution to shrink back to a smaller list size? What sort of size do people consider the maximum?

* I confess I have many custom attributes and testing showed this might be an issue. But it will take me a while to reconfigure them on a large file - so I'd like expert opinion before I start.

Thanks!

[abstr]

I hear you Jon. I'll take a look for 8.3.

[Update]

You'll either laugh or shudder when I reveal the cause - the STATUS BAR!

The status-bar displays the various selected task statistics which for large selections seems to send it into a spin.

So the good news is that if you hide the status-bar (View > Bar Visibility > Status Bar) everything becomes a whole lot more responsive.

Despite the workaround, I will treat this as a bug because there's got to be a way around it, even if it's to NOT calculate those stats when the selection count exceeds some threshold.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, and let me know how you go (I tested it on my 4500+ tasklist).

ps. There's also a big hit for me if I switch back to the task-tree having selected all the tasks in the list-view.

[JonR]

This is fantastic, and I can confirm it fixed my problem, so thanks!

Now all I have to do is actually wrangle my chaos (but sadly you can't help with that!!)

As someone who has dabbled in 'code' (like VBA back in the day)... I respect anyone who has the chops to create an entire app as comprehensive as TDL - basically as a God among mortals. Today the Gods have smiled!

[Ryan]

Thanks guys. I only have about 1300 tasks, and I don't select large numbers of them at once often. But I have noticed a much longer than expected lag when I did and just thought it was my imagination or something wrong with my computer.

Nice to hear I haven't completely lost it yet!

[abstr]

Improved in 8.3.RC1

[JonR]

Just installing the latest version now...

It's been a few years and I am staggered by the consistent output of bug fixes, responses to user requests & amazing new features.

TDL is an under-appreciated jewel among ALL software, never mind being the absolute champion for task management.

Thanks Dan!

[abstr]

Thx @JonR, that's very kind of you.