Trying to understand why FROM in a DataView query doesn't work uniformly between PC and Apple devices

Help
,
1

What I’m trying to do

I have a DataView query that looks through files in a subfolder and assembles a list of movies I haven’t watched yet. The query is straightforward:

TABLE WITHOUT ID file.link AS Movie, rating as Rating, year as Year, status as Status
FROM "Movies/Library"
WHERE contains(tags, "date_night") AND status != "watched"

It works fine on iPadOS, iOS and macOS. But on my PC, I get no results returned.

If I remove the FROM "Movies/Library" it works across all my devices.

I’d like the query to work uniformly across all my devices with the FROM line but I’m stumped as to why it’s okay on Apple OSes but not on Windows.

I’m using iCloud for vault sync’ing.

Things I have tried

  • I have made certain all my settings across all my devices are the same
  • I have made sure all my plugins are installed on my devices and they are consistent and up to date
  • I have cleared and re-built the DataView cache on my PC by disabling and re-enabling the DataView plugin
  • I have double checked that the sync’ed iCloud folder on my PC is correct and contains all the markdown files that I’m asking DataView to query and search
  • I am certain that DataView, generally, works on my PC. I’m also using it to assemble todo lists on a Today-style page and that query is working across all the pages in my vault.

Any advice on how to debug this is greatly appreciated!

2

Kind of obvious, but the root folder of your vault is the same on all devices? It’s not so that the folder on PC is vault/Movies/Library or similar?

3

They all use iCloud Drive and it should be the same Obsidian/Persona/. Looking at both Finder and Windows Explorer that appears to be the case.

The mount point for iCloud Drive is, of course, different on the PC vs. the Apple devices. But that shouldn’t matter, right? The path is from the root of the vault, is my understanding.

4

Do they look the same inside Obsidian? Do the file explorer (in Obsidian) on all devices have the top level folder as Movies with a subfolder of Library?

I’m on thin ice with this one: Do you open the vault on the PC directly from the iCloud Drive mount point? Isn’t that against the policies, as that is not treated as a normal file folder, and could possibly return something strange to Obsidian

This, if I’m not very mistaken (which I might be), could very well be the reason for your issue.

5

Ah! This is it!

On iOS/iPadOS/macOS the Obsidian file explorer has Movies at the top. But on Window, Personal is at the top of the file explorer.

On iOS/iPadOS/macOS the vault is Personal but on windows the vault is iCloud~md~obisidian.

I thought the differences were strictly Obisidian file explorer UI but I guess I opened the vault incorrectly in Obsidian on Windows?

6

It seems like it, yes. That’s why I asked about the root folder since it’s seems to be very easy to do this when combining access to a vault when the iCloud is involved. I think the difference in the folder structure is somehow related to how the ios have file access and to allow for multiple values.

Anyways, I’m glad you figured it out!