Created attachment 140418 [details]
NetBeans RPC project to reproduce this persistence bug

If the property columns have different names than their display names, which is quite usual, then, upon reading the persisted settings, the property values can no longer be identified due to dropping the initial properties and recreating them using the display name for the programmatic name. This happens in the method OutlineView.OutlineViewOutline.setColumnModel(TableColumnModel columnModel):
....
for (int ic = 1; ic < cc; ic++) {
                    TableColumn column = columnModel.getColumn(ic);
                    String name = column.getHeaderValue().toString();
                    properties[ic - 1] = new PrototypeProperty(name, name);
                }

The previous properties are then dropped and when the nodes will be created and their property sheet will use the programmatic name the association can no longer by satisfied hence all the property cell except the node column ones are empty.

Attached is a mini project based on https://blogs.oracle.com/geertjan/entry/simple_example_for_an_outlineview which can be used to replicate this behavior. Open the application and then Window/DemoTopComponent, then close the application, and reopen it.

If we modify the column header to match the property's programmatic name, that is in ro.edulib.tests.ovp.DemoTopComponent we modify:
    ov.setPropertyColumns(
            "city", "City",
            "age", "Age",
            "married", "Married");
into
    ov.setPropertyColumns(
            "city", "city",
            "age", "age",
            "married", "married");

and then empty the user's directory, the persistence will correctly work and the data is shown. However the header value is no longer what an end-user expects.

As a note the OutlineView persistence correctly worked up to and including NetBeans 7.1, and currently both in 7.3/7.4 RC1 and the very last night build, 201309240002, it doesn't.