My project has been getting bigger. I just went through my project with a fine toothed comb and deleted everything I didn’t need in order to make my files size smaller. When I had finished deleting things and saved, I was dismayed to realize my actions had no affect my my file size despite deleting hundreds of rows. How can I get Aeon to reindex or actually go through a delete things behind the scenes?
I also can’t simply copy everything into a new document to trim the unintexed bloat because I have my document synced with Scrivener and I would prefer not to break that. Any insights would be appreciated.
Jonathan, there are others here with far more experience (especially the developers, who can talk about the internal workings of AT3). But I had a thought: Did you delete items from only the Narrative/Outline views? If so, they might still exist in the Timeline/Spreadsheet views. The reason I ask is because you didn’t say from where you made the deletions. It’s a shot in the dark, I know.
Ah, good distinction that I forgot to make, and I did delete the rows from the Spreadsheet view. Basicaly, it was leftover junk accumulated over a year that built up from the Narative tab. (I didn’t initially realize that deleting things from Narative doesn’t delete things from timelint, soI filtered for non narrative items that had a tag I only use in Narrative. That’s how I determined what was junk.)
So, just to make sure I’m following you, had you already deleted the unneeded items from Timeline view, so that this problem still exists?
Yes, once I realized that there was a bunch of orphaned items from my Narrative, I deleted them from the spreadsheet, but the file size remained the same. It’s probably not a major deal. But I do worry about the project size ballooning out of my control. Thanks for all your help BTW!
I’m sure the Aeon Timeline folks will ride the rescue. 
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Hi @Jonathan the information I have is that the app doesn’t automatically reduce the space taken up by items when they’re deleted, but it’s something we’re trying to address in a future release.
If you’re on a Mac and would be happy to share your file with us, we should be able to clear out some of the excess weight for you. It’s not something we can do with Windows files yet, though.
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During the beta test phase, I looked at the AT3 file format and I noticed that it was more like a process image than a data exchange format. But maybe that has its advantages. Just out of curiosity, can any of you AT3 users tell me whether undo/redo is possible across sessions?
When you say “across sessions,” do you mean if AT3 is closed and restarted?
Exactly that. After all, the necessary data might be kept in the file.
No, when restarting AT3, the undo is dimmed.
Thank you. Was just an idea …
Hi Rob, I’m very interested in this and I just reached out on the website with a copy of my file. Hoping for a reply. I did some investigating and learned it’s probably something to with the undoHistory. I’ve copied a lot of stuff in and deleted a bunch of stuff, and I’ve also experimented with syncing which I fear has added to the file size.
I would really like to clear out all the orphaned data because I store regular backups in other places, but I also I suspect this is something I will want to do about ever 6 months. Is there any way to get an explanation of the process? I’m sure I will be able to do it if pointed in the right direction.
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Though I’m not dealing with an oversized file, I, too, would enjoy learning about this. It would give me more insight into how AT3 works under the hood.
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Thanks all for the discussion and for raising the issue.
The reason Aeon Timeline hasn’t been reducing file sizes—or has been reserving space on disk—is to support faster saving, especially on Macs where autosave can happen frequently. However, in hindsight, we can see that this approach didn’t account for significant reductions in file size.
We’ve been working on a fix to make this smarter, and it should be released in a minor update within the next 1–2 weeks.
Really appreciate your patience and all the helpful feedback!
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