Duplicate group to other open doc – destination doc is not in the list of documents to duplicate to

[Sam B+]

This bug has been happening for a good few weeks but there was a work around. Today the workaround did not work hence getting around to making a bug report. 

1. Working in PS with multiple files open in tabs including a main working file.
2. Dbl click on a PSD saved in my cloud "library'. - it opens as a separate file in another tab.
3. I go to that file just opened from the library and select some layers at the group level in order to copy that group to my main working file.
4. When the duplicate group pop-up window appears, the main working file is not listed in the options available so I am unable to duplicate the group to the main working file. 

(Previously I could work around this by duplicating to another "New" file then duplicating it from there, But this is not working today. )

New workaround is to save main working file, exit Photoshop and relaunch. Then it worked, but not really sustainable for users who are consistantly working on multiple files and using dulicate multiple times a session - it slows a pro user down. 

Using PS 24.5 release on Mac OS 13.4 Ventura

Apple M1 Max 64 GB

[CoryShubert]

Hi @Sam B+ you say this issue has been around for a few weeks, did you also see it in older Ps versions? Do you have any idea when you first noticed this?  Have you rolled back to see if your issue persists or your workaround works again?

[Sam B+]

Hi Cory

Yes - I did see it in older versions, I think I have been seeing this for a couple of months at least. But I work in production where we have to work at great speed with deadlines and I am sorry but I don't have the luxury of time to debug issues. I am not going to roll back to test this since a restart of PS has fixed it for now.

My suspicion is this: I work on a lot of large files (mostly .psbs, not .psds 5, 10, sometimes even more gigs) and often open several files open in photoshop tabs at a time. I have a powerful machine and it can handle this really well. However - I think (and correct me if I am wrong, this is not a very techy explanation), Photoshop keeps information in memory and the more you do in Photoshop, the more it keeps hold of this cached info (even if you close all the open files) until it gets to a point where it starts doing weird things (this bug is one of them, another issue is when my masks start pixelating weirdly and not working at different zoom stages, although they are really OK, they temporarily don't look OK) and then you just have to close photoshop completely and open it again. It's been for years that I have experienced this kind of thing,  even when I had less powerful machines and did less powerful work. You can't just close files in photoshop. You need to quit PS and restart to clear of its cached memory to correct all the weirdness. 

It would be great if we could somehow 'flush' photoshop of that cache without having to close everything down and restart, because working with a lot of large files non-permanent weirdness does happen regularly. Maybe I just push it too hard 😄

[Daniel Presedo]

@Sam B+  I have a question that we can take offline.

You can email me daniel at adobe dot com - I have a hunch, and with that I may have an easy workaround/fix.

If you open one of these PSD/PSB files in textedit can you tell me what you see in the metadata of that file? Screenshot may work, especially if you see repetitive entries.