Jeanette Posted October 14, 2019 Share Posted October 14, 2019 New User trying to learn Affinity after decades of Freehand. I built an Affinity doc using tutorial support, very happy with it, then hit a wrong key and lost all my hard work. Tried "control z" tried "delete" tried to get back to the file I was working on. I think the error was hitting "new artboard" ... I could not escape nor return to my file, which was lost to the ages. Speaking of ages, I am 77, have been a Freehand lover since early '80s, have MX on my old computer. Newer computer Mogave 10.14.6 accepted Affinity and works fine. Except of course of the difficulty I just outlined. Swat and unni 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unni Posted October 15, 2019 Share Posted October 15, 2019 In Affinity Photo, there is an auto save feature. It may be available in other Affinity applications also. The autosave time is default 300 seconds. This is under EDIT>PREFERENCE>PERFORMANCE File recovery interval. So every 300 seconds it saves the file. For Affinity Photo, the file is saved with an extension .autosave and file name is year date time . In Windows 7, The location is C:\Users\unni\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\1.0\autosave (Unni is my user name. For you, it will be different depending on how the windows is configured) The AppData folder is hidden. So you have to go to TOOLS>FOLDER OPTIONS>VIEW in Windows and enable show hidden files,folders and drives. Once inside this autosave folder, find the file and copy it and then paste in desktop (for example). Rename the file by changing the extension from .autosave to .afphoto. Example : 20180909175347.autosave TO 20180909175347.afphoto (For Affinity Designer the .afphoto extension may be different. Look your other saved files for this data.) Now open the file in the application. That's it !! If you have MAC OS, it will also have a similar location from where you can recover the file. Hope this helps ! @Jeanette Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palatino Posted October 15, 2019 Share Posted October 15, 2019 1 hour ago, unni said: If you have MAC OS, … /Users/Jeanette/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner/Data/Library/Application Support/autosave Mark Oehlschlager and unni 1 1 Quote Thanks to DeepL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted October 15, 2019 Share Posted October 15, 2019 56 minutes ago, unni said: Once inside this autosave folder, find the file and copy it and then paste in desktop (for example). Rename the file by changing the extension from .autosave to .afphoto. Example : 20180909175347.autosave TO 20180909175347.afphoto (For Affinity Designer the .afphoto extension may be different. Look your other saved files for this data.) Now open the file in the application. That's it !! That will work, but it should not be necessary in most cases. If an Affinity application has crashed, and autosave information is available for a file that was never saved previously, the application will prompt you to restore it when you reopen the application. Just say yes. Or, if you were working on a file that had been saved previously, when you next try to open that file in the Affinity application you will be prompted to restore the autosave information. Again, just say yes. I think that if you have your Affinity Preferences set to reopen documents when you launch the application, that even #2 will be handled when you restart the application. unni 1 Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markw Posted October 15, 2019 Share Posted October 15, 2019 I don’t really have anything much to add to what unni, Platatino and walt have already said, just that if helps to identify your target file, the numbers breakdown like this; Example file: 20180909175347.autosave = 2018 09 09 17:53:47 Year Month Day Time unni 1 Quote macOS 10.15.7 | 15" Macbook Pro, 2017 | 4 Core i7 3.1GHz CPU | Radeon Pro 555 2GB GPU + Integrated Intel HD Graphics 630 1.536GB | 16GB RAM | Wacom Intuos4 M Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted October 16, 2019 Share Posted October 16, 2019 16 hours ago, unni said: If you have MAC OS, it will also have a similar location from where you can recover the file. The location will vary slightly depending on if you bought the Affinity app from the Affinity or Mac store, but in my experience the trick of changing the extension from autosave to afdesign or afphoto often does not work: Besides, unless the Affinity app crashes, the autosave file is deleted when the file is closed. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alecia Posted November 4, 2019 Share Posted November 4, 2019 On 10/15/2019 at 1:59 PM, Palatino said: /Users/Jeanette/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner/Data/Library/Application Support/autosave what if you"re on a windows? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alecia Posted November 4, 2019 Share Posted November 4, 2019 On 10/15/2019 at 12:50 PM, unni said: In Affinity Photo, there is an auto save feature. It may be available in other Affinity applications also. The autosave time is default 300 seconds. This is under EDIT>PREFERENCE>PERFORMANCE File recovery interval. So every 300 seconds it saves the file. For Affinity Photo, the file is saved with an extension .autosave and file name is year date time . In Windows 7, The location is C:\Users\unni\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\1.0\autosave (Unni is my user name. For you, it will be different depending on how the windows is configured) The AppData folder is hidden. So you have to go to TOOLS>FOLDER OPTIONS>VIEW in Windows and enable show hidden files,folders and drives. Once inside this autosave folder, find the file and copy it and then paste in desktop (for example). Rename the file by changing the extension from .autosave to .afphoto. Example : 20180909175347.autosave TO 20180909175347.afphoto (For Affinity Designer the .afphoto extension may be different. Look your other saved files for this data.) Now open the file in the application. That's it !! If you have MAC OS, it will also have a similar location from where you can recover the file. Hope this helps ! @Jeanette @unni where do you go to tools>folder options>view at? in affinity program or on the computer itself? unni 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palatino Posted November 5, 2019 Share Posted November 5, 2019 12 hours ago, alecia said: @unni where do you go to tools>folder options>view at? in affinity program or on the computer itself? On 10/15/2019 at 6:50 PM, unni said: The AppData folder is hidden. So you have to go to TOOLS>FOLDER OPTIONS>VIEW in Windows and enable show hidden files,folders and drives. unni 1 Quote Thanks to DeepL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unni Posted November 6, 2019 Share Posted November 6, 2019 @alecia as mentioned by @Palatino above, hope you have figured it by now. If not, i can take screen shots and post it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unni Posted November 6, 2019 Share Posted November 6, 2019 The windows screen shot for changing folder options and location of the autosave file of Affinity Photo is shown in the screen shot below. @alecia Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alecia Posted November 7, 2019 Share Posted November 7, 2019 thank you so i just now saw the file pop up in my search. but when i clicked it i saw this error messaged (see below) so i went to recycle bin and restored everything i deleted from that date i last had access to the file. now none of those images are in the file so idk how its linked but i was able to retrieve the file once i restored. now my question is how do i find out what its linked to and unlink it. i want to delete clutter from my computer since I'm not using any external hard drive unni 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Dan C Posted November 7, 2019 Staff Share Posted November 7, 2019 8 hours ago, alecia said: now my question is how do i find out what its linked to and unlink it Do you have any embedded documents/images in your .afdesign file? Quote Please note - I am currently out of the office for a short while whilst recovering from surgery (nothing serious!), therefore will not be available on the Forums during this time. Should you require a response from the team in a thread I have previously replied in - please Create a New Thread and our team will be sure to reply as soon as possible. Many thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alecia Posted November 7, 2019 Share Posted November 7, 2019 hi Dan, i do have a photo in the document but i didn't delete that photo i dont believe but ill double check. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unni Posted November 7, 2019 Share Posted November 7, 2019 Try to open it in notepad. Take a copy of the file 20191103092525.autosave and save it on desktop. Now right click on this copy and select Open from the menu. click the mouse at : Select a program from a list of installed program. Press Okay Now, in the dialog box, untick : Always use the selected program to open this kind of file. Click Okay. You will be able to see the location of the linked file location. Here is a sample below. If the referred file is not in the location, then it may not be possible to retrieve. You have to locate it from the drive and put it back in the referred location with the same name. xman 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alecia Posted November 7, 2019 Share Posted November 7, 2019 @unni ok ill give it a try thanks unni 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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