Shelf buttons disappear upon restarting Maya

[Anonymous]

I'm having a problem. my buttons in my custom shelf disappears when I restart maya. maya has admin privileges and the prefs folder in my documents is not read only and my user account has the privilege to access/write this folder. I'v tried renaming my prefs folder so that maya creates a new pref folder when it starts. that way the shelf works but in that way my other settings are lost. how can I solve this button and shelf problem and keep my other settings? can anyone help ?

[n8skow]

Have you 'saved' your Shelf since creating it?

[Anonymous]

I'm running into the same issue on Maya 2015 SP5.

The custom shelf appears empty, although it's there in the shelves directory and has all the scripts in it. It's not read-only and I have admin rights.

Also, sometimes other shelves, even native ones like Polygons, appear empty, until I move to another shelf and then back to the "empy" shelf and then all the icons are there. But the custom shelf stays empty.

Can anyone help?

[Anonymous]

same here when i try to save in the script editor "check write permission" pops up. also happens when goz shelf the button.

[Anonymous]

I'm having the same problem, Maya 2015 Service-pack 4. Windows 7

Shelf and button mel scripts appear to be properly saved but the shelf loads empty.

Copying and renaming an existing shelf produces an empty shelf.

A few weeks earlier I successfully created and saved a custom shape.

Please, can some one help​?

[Anonymous]

I have found a kludge for my problem.

Create the shelf as usual.

Save All Shelves. 

Go to the Shelf Editor and change the name of the shelf.

Save All Shelves. 

Close Maya.

Open Maya --  new shelf with the new buttons appears.

Hope this works for others.

[Anonymous]

Problem is more unstable than that. Some times moving the new shelf's order position in the Shelf Editor seems to work. I have reported this to Technical Support. 02-14-2015 3:09 PM

[Anonymous]

thanks for reply tried your suggestion but didnt work... have permission on file but wont save due to write permissions.

[Anonymous]

Well, it was the same for me. Shelves moving around in their order, icons disappearing.

When I'd create a new shelf like Custom2 then it would appear emtpy although full and Custom would suddenly

have all it's buttons there.

I tried removing all prefs, shelves, etc...

and then reintroducting them back bit by bit.

Eventually I isolated userPrefs.mel as the problem. When I deleted it everything went back to normal.

Try it.

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much. Deleting prefs is working for me.

[Anonymous]

found a solution that worked for me. It's super ghetto but it did the job... hopefully this info helps someone. (this is all assuming you, like I, have un-corrupted and correct scripts in the shelf (they just aren't showing up)).

So for windows I copied the shelves (MEL files) from Documents>maya>2015>prefs>shelves and put them into a temporary folder-doesn't matter where it is. 

then in maya go ahead and delete those that appear to be empty shelves. Go into your Documents>maya>2015>prefs>shelves folder and you should see those files are labeled deleted. Delete THOSe too... 

Now back in maya go into the shelf editor and remake the shelf (note: important: when remaking the shelf look at your temporary folder with the copied files you made. if a file you copied is named "shelf_specialShapes" then in Maya you HAVE to name the shelf "specialShapes".) Now save all shelves and close Maya.

THEN..... in your Documents>maya>2015>prefs>shelves folder open that shelf you just made in notepad (wordpad or other editors will most likely save differently and break your mel with it's own formatting). With that open, open the matching copy you put in a temporary folder. Copy all the text from the temp and replace everything in the newly created shelf. Save it. Close it. Open Maya. If you were as lucky as myself, all the icons should be back and functioning.

yea it's an annoying long process, but if it works it's a lot faster than making everything over again. Good luck! 

[Markejj]

Thankyou so much as I had the same problem and yup ! your suggestions helped to  solve my drama ....Appreciated greatly  ;O)

[Anonymous]

I had the same problem, I deleted the preferences folder for maya in the c drive and it worked again.

[janerikarud]

I had this problem since the first QT version. So backup the whole prefes folder is the way to go 🙂

[Anonymous]

THIS IS FINAL ANSWER.

STEP1 - Go to prefs

STEP2 - Delete all files except folder like shelves, scripts, icons so on.

STEP3 - Restart Maya, You now see missing icons.

Done !!

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

If you don't want to remove all your preferences, editing the userPrefs.mel file and deleting entries like these, did the trick for me:

    -sv "shelfAlignX" "left"
    -sv "shelfFileX" "shelf_Name"
    -iv "shelfLoadX" 1
    -sv "shelfName" "Name"
    -sv "shelfVersionX" "XXXX"
    -iv "selectedShelf" X

I wrote a small guide here: http://amorten.com/blog/2017/maya-empty-shelves-after-restart/

[Anonymous]

real solution - much better option - thanks so much

[Anonymous]

This finally solved my problem, Thank you so much. Anyway I have to rearrange my workspace again.  

[monikagelbmann]

This issue was haunting me for a while but this solution worked for me. I wrote a little script that will do the cleanup of the userprefs.mel  as Sarfaraz suggested as it's quicker when you have a lot of shelves like me. You can download here.

https://www.highend3d.com/maya/script/free-missing-shelf-button-script-without-resetting-prefs-for-m...

Cheers,

[Anonymous]

Thank you, this worked for me without deleting all my userPrefs. Great solution.