AlpineQuest & OfflineMaps

First of all, I want to say that AlpineQuest is a great program, has been with me since 2017, extremely useful, not a single issue. But now I am trying to transfer set of maps (~25G) to a new device - Galaxy S21/Android 11. Considering draconian file access restrictions in Android 11, I opted for the AlpineQuest feature to choose user-selected location, specifically /storage/emulated/0/mymaps. Verified that AlpineQuest can download maps there, and I can read/write files at that location with file browser (CX Explorer) as well as do that externally after hooking the Galaxy to computer with USB cable. All seems to be good. However, it turns out that after copying existing maps into that location, the maps aren't recognized by AlpineQuest.

After digging a little deeper, it looks like the naming system is different when maps are sitting in default location and in user-specified location. For example, the default location /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/psyberia.alpinequest.full/files/datastore/ has subdirectory builtin- maps, which has maps named like binghyb.dat/binghyb.idx and another subdirectory builtin-previews with corresponding binghyb.preview file. That's naming appears to be the same on my old device and the new device. But the user-specified location has very different naming system. The corresponding map files are named binghyb.AQX.dat, binghyb.AQX.idx, and binghyb.AQX.preview and they all are sitting directly in the same user-specified directory rather than in subdirectories builtin-maps and builtin-previews. There is also binghyb.AQX, which does not have an analogue in default location (or I did not find it).

So I tried the following:
1. copy old maps to user specified directory - no effect on Alpine quest operation, the copied files remain unchanged when downloading additional areas (but the *.AQX.* files do change)
2. delete *.AQX.* files and manually rename old files to match. For example, there is binghyb.dat (copied old map, 2G) and binghyb.AQX.dat (create by AlpineQuest in user-specified location). I delete the later and rename the former to binghyb.AQX.dat; repeat for all other files. This still does not show old maps, but the small areas that were freshly downloaded are gone too.
3. delete *.AQX files (those files that weren't present in old maps filesystem). No change in displayed maps; the *.AQX files are just re-created by AlpineQuest.

I don't have any ideas left - please advise.

Hi,
No unfortunately with the current stable versions (2.2.9x), the storage format of the default workspace is not the same than the ones you manually create (which are simplified).
So you cannot reuse your main data as a workspace.

However I see few options:
- The more simple one, I guess, is to simply create a folder called "alpinequest" instead of "mymaps" (inside your internal memory). This folder will be recognized by the app and should be available as an optional choice for the main application folder (in the app settings, under "storage device"). Restart the app and this folder will be used, then overwrite the data from your old device.
- Use the default folder as the application folder (the one in /Android/data/...), then use an Android 11 compatible file manager to put your old data into this folder. As recently discussed here, X-plore file manager seems to be a valid choice. If you follow the new logic of Android, you'll be able to use this folder without any troubles or limitations.
- More risky: on your old device, request beta versions from the Play Store, then update to the 2.3.0 beta. This version does relocate/reformat the stored data of the main and user workpaces into a similar format (including renaming of the multiple AQX and DAT files as you've seen). Then also get the beta on your new device, and you should be able to use the default workspace storage as a user defined workspace. I say should because this is something that has not been tested, but things have been done in this direction.

Please let me know if you need more details on any point.

Thanks a bunch for a thorough and helpful response. I actually found a workaround just yesterday; something similar to the second option you've outlined. Specifically, I copied old set of maps into default AQ folder after renaming *.dat and *.idx files to *.dat- and *.idx- (without renaming copy operation failed). Then I renamed those files back to proper names - that seem like an idiotic security restriction. Rebooted and AQ recognize the old files. The only snag is that when I enable "show local storage coverage" option, the old maps show with yellow square indicators rather than red or green ones. Does not seem to affect anything though. Am I ok ignoring that?

Ok great.
About the yellow squares, this just mean they are correctly stored on your device (like the green ones), but they are outdated and the app will try to update them as soon as they are displayed with Internet access available.

If you have access to a PC, the method I used to transfer data from an old tablet onto a new phone was:
On the new machine create the map folders as normal but with a minimum amount of data in them.
Connect the old machine to Windows via USB in "file transfer" mode and copy everything you want into a Windows folder
Connect the new machine to Windows and overwrite the tiny files you created with the ones from Windows, making sure that all filenames are the same.
My new machine now has a fuill set of my old maps.

Hope this helps