91 copies of the same note displayed when using tags for the first time

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Things I have tried

What I’m trying to do

I’m a new user trying to use tags for the first time. I have only one tag set up. When I try to view only the notes with this tag, I see 91 copies of the same note. I have subscribed to Obsidian Sync. I’m guessing that these 91 copies are the Sync earlier versions of the note.

I cannot find any references to this issue in Help files or search in this forum and I’ll be grateful if anybody can advise. Thanks!

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I subsequently found that my main vault had been copied many times as nested folders within the main vault.

I deleted these nested copies, which of course, resolved the issue with my multiple copies of the tagged notes being displayed.

I’ve raised a support query about how the multiple nested copies of my vault were created. I presently assume that it was to do with an Obsidian Sync issue. I’ll be grateful if anybody here can advise what I might have done in error to prevent me from doing it again!

Thanks.

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Update #3

I carefully deleted some of the nested additional folders to test that it would not have an issue. The original notes remained in place, so I went ahead and deleted all of the unwanted copies, leaving the original notes in place.

Sadly, this action led to the deletion of ALL of my notes and I apparently lost a day’s work.

I then went into Obsidian Sync to try to recover the notes. This recovery was available to me, but was a tedious exercise as I had to select every note individually, carefully differentiating based on whether or not there were nested folders in the filename.

Taking about 30 minutes to choose carefully, I selected about 80 notes and clicked on restore now.

I watched the status update message and saw that only about 50 notes were recovered, seeing a message that I recall saying that 26 had failed to recover.

And now I see that the original issue of multiple nested copies of my vault has reappeared.

I have raised a further support ticket to Obsidian. If anybody reading this post has any observations, I’ll be grateful to hear from you.

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Where is your vault saved on your system? Can you share the file structure?

It sounds like some kind of double-sync/race condition is happening, possibly because either you’ve created a vault inside another vault accidentally, or because your vault is located in a third-party sync service’s folder, such as iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive.

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Thanks for your response. I’m really grateful!

I have a folder “Peter Button’s Vault” that is in my Dropbox folder on my Mac. I have also subscribed to the paid Obsidian Sync service.

Should I have created the Obsidian Vault outside of Dropbox? I was concerned about having my Obsidian Vault only in one place with Obsidian Sync.

I can understand that this might have caused double-sync issues as you suggest.

I’ll be very grateful for your advice about:

  1. Where my vault should be located
  2. How should I recover all of the notes that I have created

It seems from the implications in your post that I should perhaps create a new folder outside of Dropbox and then use Obsidian Sync to populate that new folder with the deleted notes. Does this sound like the correct course of action to you?

Thanks again!

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I had a similar issue using onedrive. the sync plugin and sync services seem to just duplicate the files (mine were duplicated and tagged at the end like ‘note(home_pc)’ ‘note(iphone)’ etc.) id just start using one or the other, If you can get syn working for you id suggest that, personally I’m going to stop my Sync sub and just am going with a USB drive I keep on my keychain that can plug into my phone and PC. Seems to be working just as well lol.

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Thanks for this!

I’ve now found a very similar post to mine:

I will continue with my Obsidian Sync subscription and create a new vault outside Dropbox.

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Hi Ryan - thanks again for pointing me in the direction of a double-sync condition.

I think that I now understand what happened. I’m about to create a new vault outside Dropbox.

I had a look at you website and I was very interested to read your article:

Very interesting and well-structured!

These are the ideas and possibilities that have finally got me to invest the time required to engage with Obsidian.

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That’s exactly right. Follow-up if you have further troubles!

Thanks! The NOTE framework is a little soft but I think the ideas still hold today, 1.5 years later.

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