When you delete a Folder or Category you are prompted to choose a new location for your assets. If you decide not to choose a new location and the file was only in the one folder/category that you deleted, then your assets will become 'orphaned'.

This means that your assets are still within the Asset Bank system, but they are not in a Folder/Category. This can cause issues when trying to find your assets as they may not be visible through the browse options.

The reason why this is possible is that your assets are not stored in a physical folder that matches what you see in the front-end of the system. Folders are effectively metadata tags used in the system, this enables you to place an asset in multiple folders or categories without any duplication on the server.

There are a few steps to go through to find and update the orphaned assets - you will need to be an administrator to complete these steps:

1. (Optional) Create a new Folder or Category as appropriate to serve as a holding place for your assets, so you can easily update their information in the front-end of the system.

2. Run an advanced search for *. This will return all assets in the system, even though it is likely the system will display a message such as "Over 1000 assets".

3. From the search results page, use the "Export all results" option at the bottom to export the metadata for all of your assets to a tab-delimited .txt file that you can edit using Microsoft Excel (or similar).

Please note you should not check any of the options for this process or select native Excel 2007 Format (should it be available). 

4. Download and open the exported .txt or .xls file using your chosen spreadsheet editor. Find the "accessLevels" (Folders) or "categories" column as appropriate. Any row with no text in this column is an orphaned asset. Update these rows with the correct location, or use the folder you created in step 1. above to act as a temporary location. Please ensure you save the file as a tab-delimited .txt file, which should be the same format as the exported file.

5. Back on front-end of the system, access the Update Items > Metadata Import page. Start a new metadata import using the .txt file that you have edited. Your assets will then either be in the correct location, or in the newly created folder from step 1. for you to edit and update more easily in the system.

As this process can potentially have an adverse affect on your assets if you are not comfortable doing these steps yourself please contact the support team so we can provide assistance.