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I am new to Affinity Publisher, but I've worked with several publishing programs over the years (CorelDraw, Microsoft Publisher, InDesign). Last week and over the weekend I was working on a 20 page catalog for a client. I was down to my last two pages to finish, saved the file, but left the file open and my computer on and went to bed. I get back to it Monday morning, and the computer is unresponsive. I shut it down and restart everything. When I tried to open the Publisher file, I got an error message that the file was corrupt. I made a copy of the file early in the design on a second hard drive, but wasn't working with that file. I was working on a local file.

I opened the original file (basically a blank file) but hours of work were gone.

After searching this forum, I read that a backup file is created. I located that file, renamed it with the .afpub extension, and it opened only to reveal that it was the original blank file I had just opened.

Is there a way to tell Publisher to create incremental backup files in case a corruption happens to the the file you are working on? I understand the one backup file, but I would like 3 or 4 versions just in case of a corruption. At least I wouldn't have lost tens of hours of design work.

My PC is a Surface Pro 6, i5, 8GB Ram, 256SSD.

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Welcome to the forums.
I don’t think Publisher has any kind of incremental save/backup facility (I’ve never seen one and I would like one myself).
Personally I use “Save As...” with a different name quite often and that works for me but it’s not ideal.
It might be possible for the developers to de-corrupt your file if you ask them to but that could be a long shot depending on what’s happened to it during the ‘episode of unresponsiveness’, or they might be able to just ‘flip a switch’ (it might just think it’s still open).
It’s worth asking.

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  • Staff

@GarryP Without looking at the file it's hard to say, some elements may be missing but most can be recovered. However files that show as 0KB or if the beginning/start of the file is messed up it may not be possible.

The Save History with Document is more for adding to a users Save Workflow, getting into the habit of regular saving/backing up of documents.

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Shanezep

Reading some of the other posts, I note that incremental save is available with the beta. I obtained a copy of the beta, but my skills are very low. Did not find how to do the incremental save. I lost all my work once in the 1990's, therefore I tend to save often. My original books were in PagePlus. However like many others, I do tend to get involved and keep on working. Being retired and re-learning for fun, anything I lose means that I will need to re-do the lessons again. I feel for you. I've forgotten so much and realise that I did most of it wrong anyway. However, back to the gist. Hopefully 'incremental save' will come on the next upgrade.

Regards

Ross

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4 hours ago, Rossjackson01 said:

Reading some of the other posts, I note that incremental save is available with the beta.

Do you have any further information for this statement? I'm interested because I never heard anything about it.

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

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Thank you everyone for posting.

I have lost major work as well over the years using about every program, whether CorelDraw, Vegas Pro (video editing), Microsoft Publisher, etc. and have learned to save in multiple places, and I should have saved this file as well, but got deep into it and the thought didn't even cross my mind.

I recently acquired a 2013 13" MacBook Pro (from my daughter since she's out of college now) and bought all of the Affinity apps for that as well, so maybe I need to use that instead. I just happen to like the Surface Pro for it's portability. Actually I am excited for Publisher to be on the iPad as I LOVE working on my iPad Pro.

As it is now, I have finished the project, saving in two locations as I went. What a pain that is.

Incremental backups would be great, even if simply for the current file you're working on and it would rotate through a certain number of files, overwriting or deleting the oldest files first. So if you did get a corruption, you would be only 300 seconds or 5 minutes away from a non-corrupt file. Then once you are finished, save that file (or group of files) in two spots or over a NAS with redundancy.

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9 hours ago, Rossjackson01 said:

Psenda

Not sure how to pick up a post. I typed 'incremental back up' as a search. Went straight to the post. 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/search/&q=incremental back up

Hope this works.

Couldn't you link directly to a specific post? This search gives me a whole lot of irrelevant results.

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

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I can see no indication on the search results page for backup files. What I can find are autosave files in case the application crashed. For Windows and Publisher you can find the location here: C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Publisher\1.0\autosave

In theory you will be asked if you want to recover the file(s). In theory, because looking at my folder for autosave there are several files, but I was never asked to recover.

I read somewhere, that these autosave files will be deleted after successful recovery and programme closing without issues, but not true in my case, because there are still files from August this year.

------
Windows 10 | i5-8500 CPU | Intel UHD 630 Graphics | 32 GB RAM | Latest Retail and Beta versions of complete Affinity range installed

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54 minutes ago, Rossjackson01 said:

incremental save

Sorry, but "save" (autosave function) and "backup" (normal or incremental) are completely different issues.

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

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OK :-)

Affinity applications should ensure automatic saving and eventual recovery of work in progress, while data backup is a task for a special application.

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

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3 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Affinity applications should ensure automatic saving and eventual recovery of work in progress,

And they do, via the current Autosave option :)
 

-- 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

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4 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

@stokerg's comments in that post are not quite right, in my experience, though.

  1. When you restart an Affinity application, if you had any "new" files (files which are "unnamed") that have Autosave files, you will be prompted to restore those files so you can recover your work. If you restore them, their Autosave files will be deleted. However,
  2. If you were working on named files (files which had been previously saved), you will not be prompted to restore at that time. Later, when you next open those files you will get the prompt. And that is when their Autosave files will be deleted.

Due to point 2, it is not safe to assume that you can delete the files in the Autosave directory simply because you're not being prompted. They might be files for a previously saved project that you have made changes to, but not finished working on.

-- 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

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2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

And they do

Yes, sometimes yes. But you have certainly noticed many posts that do not confirm perfect functionality.

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

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