i am currently doing mods for an upcoming project in a week.
when using the search/replace tool i see a lot of old pages (since deleted) some from years ago come up in the
tool results, is this because the *.CTF files still exist in the Project directory?
is there a tool or simple way to purge the redundant files from the project for housekeeping purposes?
It is possible those are 'hidden' pages (a rarely-used feature), not deleted pages. When you delete a page, it asks if you want to delete all records. If you choose No, it removes the page from the page list (pages.dbf), but leaves all the graphic objects for that page in the project.
If someone did that, you won't see those pages when browsing for pages in the Graphics Builder, but you can manually type the page name in the Open Page dialog box and edit it normally.
In this screenshot, the Disabled page was hidden but if I type the name in, it shows a thumbnail of the page and allows me to open it for editing:
You can still view the page normally in the runtime. It just makes it harder for unauthorized people to edit the page in the Graphics Builder.
If pages have been hidden in your project (accidentally or on purpose), that would explain why the Find tool is finding the graphics.
To see what pages may have been hidden, compare the names of the .CTG files in your project with the page list in the Studio/Graphics Builder (or pages.dbf).
I tried typing the page in to the Open dialog, then clicking Delete, but it doesn't seem to remove it. Here's a way I found to work, although there may be an easier method...
1. Create a new page
2. Save the new page with the name of the hidden page
3. When it asks, choose to overwrite the existing page
4. Go to the File menu | Open | Page tab. The page should now be listed.
5. Select the page and click the delete button
6. Select Yes to delete all records.
Another possibility is that you could manually add the hidden pages to pages.dbf to un-hide them (using Excel or LibreOffice Calc). Then go to the Graphics Builder and delete each one.
