B) Issues – Quick Access Popup

Why does QAP sometimes look frozen or takes time to show its popup menu?

Normally, the QAP popup menu shows instantly when you invoke it (by default, pressing the Middle Mouse Button or hitting Windows +W). But there are some situations external to QAP that sometimes prevent or delay the menu display. Here are the most common causes as well as available solutions. From the feedback received on the QAP Forum, the most common cause of delay is when you have menu items saved on an offline network drive. We will cover this in detail below. But first, let’s exclude some easier issues.

If you have questions or comments about this topic, you can add your post to this forum thread:
Why does QAP sometimes look frozen or takes time to show its popup menu?

Hardware issues

It has been reported that, sometimes, on some mouse, the wheel does not react when pressed. This can be a limitation of the mouse model or just a malfunctioning (see this video, for example). To confirm the issue, try replacing the mouse to see if the new mouse wheel can be pressed to open the QAP menu. If, in the end, the middle button is not available, you can select another mouse trigger in Options, Popup Hotkeys or use the keyboard trigger (by default Windows +W). More info here: How do I display the Quick Access Popup menu?

Check the exclusion list

In the Options, Popup Menu section, make sure you did not specify an unwanted exclusion in the Mouse Trigger Blacklist or that you did not select Whitelist without specifying the windows where the QAP menu could be activated. To reset the default setting, select the Blacklist radio button and make sure list is empty.

The menu does not open over some windows

This is probably because these windows belong to applications running as administrator. When an application is launched with an higher security privilege level (sometimes referred as ACL for Access Control List), its windows are not accessible to applications running with lower privilege. From QAP point of view, these windows are like black holes where the mouse middle click or keyboard trigger have no effect. More info here: Why is the middle mouse button not working over some windows?

Long refresh time

The QAP menu is built when you launch the app. It is refreshed each time you save your changes in the Customize or Options windows, and when you select the menu Tools, Refresh Live Folders and Shared menus.

In addition to that, some submenu are dynamic submenus and are refreshed each time you open the menu (if they appear in your menu). Refreshing these menu is very quick and should not cause any perceptible delay. These menu are: Recent Folders*, Recent Files*, Frequent Folders*, Frequent Files*, Drives*, Clipboard*, Current Windows, Reopen a Folder, Repeat Last Actions, Favorites in Customize window*, TC Directory hotlist and Directory Opus Favorites.

* These menus can cause a delay if they contain items on a network drive that is offline. See Network drives offline below.

In addition, the menu can be refreshed by a background task (see Can I schedule automatic menu refresh for Live folders and Shared menus?). If this options is enabled, the menu is temporarily unavailable while it is refreshed. If you have a very large menu with numerous submenus, shared menus and lengthy Live folders, the menu will not respond for a few seconds but only while it is refreshed (every 5 minutes by default).

Network drives offline

The main cause for delays long enough to let users think QAP is frozen is when an offline network drive contains favorites (folders or files) in the QAP menu. Starting with v11.0.7, QAP adds more robust protection against offline drives and add new options in Options, Menus Advanced Options. For more info, see: Can I create favorites on network drives?

If you encounter such delays and have a QAP version prior to v11.0.7, it is strongly recommended to upgrade to latest version.

Live folders and Shared menus on network drives

Also, you should avoid creating Live folders and Shared menus on network drives that could be offline. When refreshing its menu, QAP tries to read the content of Live folder and Shared menus to build its menu. An offline drive will cause a delay.

However, with QAP v11 or more recent, you could have a Live folder on a network drive and enable the new checkbox Refresh this Live Folder menu only with the command “Refresh Live Folders and Shared menus” (under the Live Folder Options) and avoid refreshing the menus when you know that a network drive is offline.

For users of older releases

If you use an older QAP version and have drives that are sometimes offline, there are a few things you can do to avoid this delay.

Stop retrieving icons for UNC drives: for QAP v10 only, in Options, Menu Icons, disable the checkbox Retrieve icons when refreshing Frequent folders and Frequent files menus (avoid if some files are often offline).
Remove the Frequent and Recent menus: by default, the Frequent Folders, Frequent Files, Recent Folders and Recent Files menus are inserted in the In the Works submenu; select them in the Customize window and click the Remove button.
Disable the QAP database: in Options, Database, uncheck the Enable Quick Access Popup database checkbox; this automatically remove the Frequent menus.
Remove the Drives menu (under My QAP Essentials) if you have network drives mapped to letter (like N:\); when refreshing this menu, QAP tries to retrieve the drive’s name and free space, causing a delay if the drive is offline.

B) Issues Popup menu

QAP is running but my Customize window is not visible. What happened?

Each time you exit Quick Access Popup, the position of the Customize window and the Quick Launch window are saved in the settings file and restored the next time you open them.

The most probable explanation for the “disappearance” of these windows is that your screen configuration changed and that last positions of the windows are now not visible on your current screen(s) configuration (they are somewhere “outside” of the visible area of you screen). This issue could also be explained by Windows reporting an incorrect position.

To restore the default position of the Customize and Quick Launch windows, open the QAP system menu (right-click the QAP icon in the Notification zone) and select Tools, Restore “Customize” window position or Tools, Restore “Quick Launch” window position. The windows will now be centered in your main screen.

Right-click the QAP icon in the Notification zone to open the QAP system menu

B) Issues Customize

The Manage Icons window is too large. How can I resize it or scroll the list?

Manage Icons – Click to enlarge

The tools I am using to develop QAP does not allow to add a scroll bar to a dialog box list when it contains multiple images per row as this one. This is why the Manage Icons window is presenting the icons page by page.

Each page contains as many icons as possible according to the size of your screen. The number of rows displayed in each page is calculated based on the screen size reported by Windows. If, for any reason, Windows returns an incorrect size value to QAP or if QAP misinterprets this info (which seems to be the case when screen scaling is active), the window could be too small or, more frequently, too large. This could make the window unusable because the Previous, Next and Close buttons could be “outside” of the screen.

The solution to this is to manually set the number of rows of this window. To do it, open the Options dialog box, Menu Icons tab (or Various Advanced Options tab starting with v11.5.7) , and enter a small number of rows in the Manage Icons window row zone. After testing it, increase the value up to the maximum that works on your screen.

More info about managing icons: Can I manage all my menu icons in one screen?

B) Issues Icons

QAP does not save its configuration. How is it possible?

You probably downloaded the Quick Access Popup “portable” file and unzipped it in a system-protected folders like those under C:\Program Files. Windows security normally prevents applications like QAP to write files under this folder. This is why QAP cannot save your configuration.

Find more information about the portable installation.

Or install QAP using the easy Setup version.

B) Issues

Why are the middle mouse button or keyboard shortcuts not working over some windows?

Most of the time, this issue is related to ACL (Windows Access Control List).

Each window in Windows is launched with a given set of rights. Basically, there are two levels:

user level (standard permissions)
administrator level (elevated permissions)

With elevated permissions (or privileges), user can make system changes that affect his configuration, security, etc. and that can also affect all other users on the system.

Quick Access Popup hotkey (by default, middle mouse button) only works on windows that have equal or lower access level. If you start an application with an higher “administrator” privileges (using the Run As Administrator Windows Explorer menu), QAP will not have the permission to open its menu over the windows created by this app. To do so, you would have to also launch QAP with administrator privileges.

Is it a good idea to launch QAP as Administrator? You have to know that every program started from QAP will the also inherit these enhanced rights. This could allow them to do changes on your system without prompting you. From a system security point of view, this may put your system at risk. In other words, you have to know what you are doing.

B) Issues Admin privileges, Triggers, Windows

Why are QAP context menus not working in some windows?

In some setup, the QAP context menus may work well in Windows Explorer windows but not in a custom file manager. Or the opposite.

This is generally because some applications are running with different access privileges.

For example, if your file manager is running with administrator permissions while QAPmessenger.exe (that app transmitting commands from context menus to QAP) is running with standard permissions, messages sent from the context menu could not be received by QAP. Maybe you should run your file manager with regular permission or, on the opposite, launch QAPmessenger.exe with elevated privileges.

The opposite could also be true: if QAP runs in admin mode and Windows Explorer (or your custom file manager) in standard mode, context menus in Explorer could not launch QAP commands because QAP has higher permissions than Explorer. Context menu can only call apps having privileges equal or lower than Windows Explorer has.

To find more about installation and enabling of Explorer context menu, read the Explorer Context Menus Help.

B) Issues Admin privileges, Context menu, Messenger, Windows

QAP stops loading with an error message. What happened?

If you use QAP v11.5.3 or more recent, you could see this message alerting you that the last time your favorites were saved, QAP was interrupted before completing its task. When this happens, QAP loads your previous settings and your recent changes are lost. To avoid this error in the future, make sure QAP completes its saving before turning off your computer.

You could also see this error message.

Two reasons can explain this error message:

1) something wrong happened interrupting QAP while it was saving your settings and QAP could not react to fix it;

or 2) you edited the settings file manually and did not respect the structure of the settings file (see What is the structure of QAP settings (ini) file?)

The easiest way to solve this issue is to restore your latest settings backup. You can do it by renaming your current QuickAccessPopup.ini to QuickAccessPopup-broken.ini and renaming your latest backup to QuickAccessPopup.ini.

Open the QAP working directory in your file manager. In the Customize window, select File, Open QAP working directory (pre-v10 users, see What’s the QAP working directory?).
Close QAP before renaming the settings file: select File, Exit Quick Access Popup.
Rename QuickAccessPopup.ini to QuickAccessPopup-broken.ini.
Find your latest backup file and copy it in your QAP working directory. Your backup files are saved in the Main settings file backup folder set in Options, General tab.
Rename this file from something like QuickAccessPopup-backup-20210219.ini (the last part of the file name is the backup date in “YYYYMMDD” format) to QuickAccessPopup.ini.
Restart QAP.

B) Issues Ini file, Launching QAP

Why does dialog boxes sometimes refuse to change folder?

First, make sure the change folder in dialog box option is enabled. See: Can I change folders in file dialog boxes (Open, Save As, etc.)?

There seems to be an intermittent issue noted in Firefox (and possibly other apps) that interrupt the change folder action initiated by QAP.

Normally, QAP introduces a 100 ms delay at a given step when changing folder in dialog boxes. Making this delay longer may help. In my tests, it increased success rate in Firefox dialog boxes (without resolving the issue completely, unfortunately).

To change this delay, select Options, Various Advanced Options and update the value as shown below. 100 is the default value (in milliseconds). Increase it to 200 (or more) to see how it improves changing folders in Firefox or other apps.

Feel free to use the QAP Forum to give feedback on this issue.

B) Issues Dialog box

Why some buttons or icons are not displayed correctly in the Customize window?

This is probably because you enabled screen scaling (under Windows 10 Settings, Ease of Access, Display) as most users with an High-DPI (HDPI) displays (like Surface Book) do. This can cause two issues.

First, with QAP versions before v11.5.3, some buttons intended to be centered were shifted to the right of the window and could overlap with other components of the window. This has been fixed with QAP v11.5.3.

The other issue is that icons on QAP windows are not scaled and look smaller than on screens with regular DPI. See this example (taken from an old QAP version but this has not changed since): on the left, the Customize window on a standard desktop PC and, on the right, the same window on a Surface Book.

To solve it, you can set a Windows compatibility option to fix the high DPI scaling behavior. This may affect the quality of your display and you could prefer to keep the small buttons. Here is how you can try this setting:

Find the Quick Access Popup executable file (normally in C:\Program Files\Quick Access Popup).
Right-click the QuickAccessPopup.exe executable icon in Windows Explorer.
Select Properties, then Compatibility, then Change high DPI settings.
In the new dialog box, check Override high DPI scaling behavior and select System (Enhanced) or System from the dropdown list. Choose the option that gives the best results on your screen.
It is recommended to reboot the computer in order to enforce the change and clear out older settings or window displays.

Labels or options can vary depending on your Windows 10 version. Thanks to QAP user Jörg Giencke, you can use this tip from brianapps (the developer of Sizer 4.0).

B) Issues Customize, Windows

I upgraded from a pre-v8 QAP version, why don’t I see the icons in my menu?

NOTE: The following info is for users who upgraded to QAP from a version before v8.

Icons management has been greatly improved when QAP v8 was introduced. To make sure QAP won’t overwrite the custom icons you have added to your menu, QAP will not update your icons automatically to the new icons. I prefer to let you oversee the replacement of old icons using the new Manage Icons dialog box.

A bit of background…

If you started using QAP before v8, your menu includes icons taken from Windows system files shell32.dll and imageres.dll. These icons library files are installed with every Windows version. To use one of these icons, QAP had to specify their positions (numeric index) in the library. The issue with these files is that, from one Windows version to the other, icons were added, removed or moved in the library. This caused me headaches and a lot of tedious work to keep track with these always changing index numbers for the various Windows version of QAP users.

In addition, if you upgraded to a new Windows version, chances are that some of your icons were replaced with an image not related to the favorite.

With QAP v8+, this headache is behind us. I decided to invest some money to buy a licence to include the nice icons from Icons8 (you can help me share this expense, if you wish). With my own icons library, I now rely on stable library file named JLicons.dll. If you installed QAP with the “Easy Setup” mode, this file JLicons.dll is saved in the shared applications folder C:\Program\Data\JeanLalonde\. If you preferred the “Portable” mode, the file is included in the portable ZIP file and must be kept in the same folder as QAP executable file.

Now, to see these new icons, please use the Manage Icons dialog box and click on the default icons on the right side of the screen to select them.

B) Issues Icons

Can QAP run if I’m using a Russian keyboards?

One of my goals with QAP is to make it run on as many international systems as possible. But programming hotkeys on a Russian keyboard is a challenge for a non-Russian developer like me living in Canada. Russian keyboards are very different from most of those used in America or Europe. Up to QAP v8.6.x, launching QAP on a system with Russian keyboard was giving error messages and configuration issues making the app unusable.

Starting with version v8.7, changes has been made to QAP code when running with Russian keyboard:

at first execution, default keyboard hotkeys showing the popup menu (normally Windows + W and Shift + Windows + W) are changed for Windows + ц and Shift + Windows + ц . I choose the “ц” character (ASCII Unicode 0419) because it is located at the “w” location on my keyboards. Users can change it in QAP Options, Popup Hotkeys tab;
at first execution, to avoid startup errors, QAP will not creates default hotkeys for frequently used features as it would normally do, letting users create their preferred hotkeys themselves;
QAP internal hotkeys available in the Customize window are disabled because they were creating errors.

Important for QAP existing users: on systems with a Russian keyboard, it is recommended to first run QAP with a *fresh* install (making sure the file QuickAccessPopup.ini does *not* exist when you launch QAP). QAP will then create a new QuickAccessPopup.ini OK for Russian keyboard. If you had favorites in a previous installation, import them in the new installation from a backup of your settings.

B) Issues, Uncategorized