QGIS » QGIS Application

I moved a couple of point files and on opening QGis was prompted with the missing bad layers dialogue. However on selecting them the Browse button was still greyed out. Both files were delimited text files which I note are referenced quite differently in the .qgs file. Attached screen grab of dialogue with greyed browse in case this is not clear.

I edited the qgs file and changed the path to a raster file, wanting to test if the issue only related to delimited text files but despite me putting in the wrong path to the raster file QGis managed to open it happily and display it and know where it was so presumably the qgs file is not the only place the file info is kept???? ...or does QGis cache its previous opening so that if I open, then close and open again it just loads from cache?

So I moved the raster file and now QGis can't find it and it is included in the missing files in the bad layers dialogue and if I select it the browse button works (see screen grab) so the problem appears to be specific to delimited text or maybe any file which is expressed explicitly in the qgs file. In case that is not clear. Files are normally specified relative to the QGS project file as in...

<layer-tree-layer source="./geochem/gchem_geo_gda94.MIF" id="gchem_geo_gda9420170719100612893" name="gchem_geo_gda94" expanded="1" providerKey="ogr" checked="Qt::Unchecked">

But delimited text is specified as ...

<layer-tree-layer source="file:///srv/wrk/navarre/Ararat/gravity/newcrest/EL3019-EL4758_G33801_2004_data_Ara04GDA_clip20june2016.csv?type=csv&xField=Long&yField=Lat&crs=EPSG:4283&spatialIndex=no&subsetIndex=no&watchFile=no" id="EL3019_EL4758_G33801_2004_data_Ara04GDA_clip20june2016_6f7ba178_57d9_4645_88ba_56e574b27cb0" name="EL3019-EL4758_G33801_2004_data_Ara04GDA_clip20june2016" expanded="1" providerKey="delimitedtext" checked="Qt::Checked">

I then went back and edited the qgs file to put in the current path to the two missing delimited text files and it made no difference!!! The bad layers dialogue showed the two files with the original unedited path???

I had to open without the files and then manually reload them. On saving I notice that the file structure had changed slightly so this may be an issue in reading 2.18 gqs files with 3.2 when there are missing layers.