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Do you have the auto save function?


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Hi

I am designing on Affinity Designer, it took about an hour, but it suddenly shutdown, My working for an hour is gone. It doesn't have the auto save function?

My PC windows 10 has the 16GB memory. Do I need to save sometimes? 

ref) C:\Users\tetsu\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Designer\1.0\autosave

I look for autosave file, but it dosn't have a file.

If it doesn't have the auto save, please add it .

 

 

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Hi Tetsujikenny - I don't think any Affinity software has auto save so I'd suggest saving every few minutes. I use a program called AJC Active Backup which automatically saves versions of your documents when you save it so if you get a corrupted file or you accidentally delete a file you still have something you can open.

Windows 10 Pro, I5 3.3G PC 16G RAM

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There is an Autosave function, for emergency recovery after a crash. If you check your Affinity Preferences, under Performance, you should see a setting for File Recovery Interval. If it's not zero, then backups should be made of any new or changed documents at that interval.

When you start an Affinity application, it should prompt to to recover any unnamed files that you were working on. For named files it would prompt when you try to open the file again.

It works for me, and some other users, but there are other users who don't seem to have much luck with it.

-- 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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  • 3 weeks later...
  • Staff

We have made fixes/improvements to this area (Autosave fails on opened files) of the program in the latest release.

The fixes and how to update are described in these forum posts.

We would appreciate you checking that this issue has now been resolved for you,

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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  • 2 years later...

There is no auto save in Affinity Designer. I appreciate the saved file in the event of a crash or power outage, but I don't see why my working files can't be saved every 30 seconds or so. It's far too easy to do a 'save as' without saving the file you were working on previously and losing the work that was done in the previous file.

Given that auto-saves are standard across mac OS, you are setting your users up for pain by not following that pattern.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have been getting very unfortunate crashes where the restore file is corrupted and no file can be restored. If I get into an image and lose track of time (please don't reply by saying the obvious 'you should save regularly', it won't help resolve matters, because sometimes I forget, simply put). Being lost in the creative flowis an important part of the productivity. I'd like to support the call for an autosave proper, like most other software. When I use sketchup it saves very regularly and because it (also) suffers from these unexpected 'bug splats' as they call them, the auto save saves me alot of repeating myself.  Affinity, please give us autosave proper!

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1 minute ago, Ian R said:

unfortunate crashes where the restore file is corrupted and no file can be restored. (...) I'd like to support the call for an autosave proper, like most other software.

Usually I am glad when the app reopens / restores a current document after an app crash which usually contains the most work since my last save. From this perspective the concept for autosave in Affinity is fine.

But I am rather concerned when a simple, usual Save action suddenly appears to trigger one of the various "can't read" … "access lost" … "must be closed""file corrupted" error messages (while working in that file did not). Ironically, for the majority of this error situations caused by "Save" an immediate second or third trial is well able to open the file, often, not always, including the recent changes, and at least in the last saved state of the document. – Whereas it also happens that it requires several trails to open a saved document (same set of error messages).

So I'd "just" like the existing .autosave feature would work more reliable – and never would lose their contact to the saved version of the document.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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  • 2 weeks later...

It needs to be stressed that it is not an autosave function. Such a function would give you options for time intervals of saves.  An auto-restore after a crash as well as a proper autosave function would be appropriate I think. BTW I'm only responding on here at this moment because I have had another crash on saving the file ('Save Failed Access Was Denied'). Fortunately this time the restore option functioned well and I didn't lose much.

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  • Staff
37 minutes ago, Ian R said:

Such a function would give you options for time intervals of saves. 

Like this

image.png

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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25 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

Like this

This is not Auto-Saving the document. – As I mentioned above and by @Ian R literally:

1 hour ago, Ian R said:

It needs to be stressed that it is not an autosave function. Such a function would

The problem with the existing feature & .autosave files is that they don't help at all if app-internal issues occur.

The .autosave files do not save the entire document but rather incremental snippets only that can't be used without the "really" saved document file. This problem of .autosave is involved in the various errors that may happen if an open & saved document shall get saved its newest state but fails … which appears to confuse the app such massively that even the saved version of the document turns into being a corrupted document that can't get opened at all any more.

Oddly, in these situation it can work – though open fails – to import the complete document contents via "Add Pages to document" – which indicates that "actually" the failing file is not really corrupted but just classified by the app as such. Not only confusing but also annoying because this way it appears to be a very unnecessary, easily avoidable bug.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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49 minutes ago, thomaso said:

As I mentioned above and by @Ian R literally:

What @Ian R said was that the function would give you control over the interval, and the File Recovery function provides that control.

A true Autosave function would be disastrous, in my opinion, unless it saved a separate copy of the document upon each autosave operation. If it simply overwrote the original file, then it would be as likely to cause additional problems as it would be to help resolve problems. It has been shown that any Save operation to an Affinity file may cause undetected issues, so all saves to the original file need to be under the user's control so the user can do them when desired, and then verify that the Save worked properly.

Even better, of course, would be to resolve the issues that seem to happen where Saving seems to work but actually corrupts the file. If those issues were resolved, then possibly an Autosave that overwrote the original would be acceptable. Until then, it's not.

-- 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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45 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

A true Autosave function would be disastrous, in my opinion, unless it saved a separate copy of the document upon each autosave operation.

Agree, it would require to ensure that at least the last not-automatically, manually saved version would be preserved. (… and there existing various concepts how such works in other apps)

A discussion about details of this kind of autosave appears not relevant here for Affinity – since it simply doesn't exist in Affinity. But also it doesn't make sense to point to the incremental autosave variation used by Affinity as long it fails because of its own issues. With other words: an autosave feature which depends on coincidence may be a combination of auto + save-of-something but is not what autosave is expected to do, where reliability is a main feature.

I assume users would not miss an autosave feature if the current Affinity solution would really work reliable. And, additionally and again, the fact that this Affinity solution can result in definite corruption of files that were fully saved by users makes it worth than no autosave in that specific situations. I don't mean at all that I wish the incremental autosave variant would not exist, I appreciate its existence, – but only if it doesn't fail.

45 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

What @Ian R said was

literally:

3 hours ago, Ian R said:

It needs to be stressed that it is not an autosave function.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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On 3/17/2020 at 4:56 PM, walt.farrell said:

There is an Autosave function, for emergency recovery after a crash.

Ironically, in fact this feature often creates the emergency which would not occur without this feature. This is what feels really confusing and disturbing. It's like being run over by an ambulance that rushes in to save you - even though you were healthy before.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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20 minutes ago, thomaso said:

literally:

Yes, but the next sentence, which seems to specify why Ian doesn't think it's a true Autosave, was wrong. And that's what Patrick responded to.

-- 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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I would welcome an autosave which allows greater control and possible separate versions saved in a different location - you could say that's a backup which you can recover your autosaved recovery file from, but then people would be really confused what label to give it.. an autosave backup reserve restore - forget about the words. I'm sorry I tried to use some correct terminology and slipped up a bit, no need to dissect my words...

What's important is the functionality

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On 11/9/2022 at 1:31 PM, Ian R said:

people would be really confused what label to give it.. an autosave backup reserve restore

I don't see a need to decide a specific file name for auto-saved documents. For instance AfterEffects.app automatically adds an increasing number at the end of any custom file name and, besides the interval, also gives a choice for the maximum number of auto-saved files.

https://www.schoolofmotion.com/blog/autosave-after-effects

The problem in Affinity auto-save is its incremental .autosave files which depend on a saved .afpub document – and aren't of any use if Affinity fails in combining the parts correctly. Then its insisting trial can result in a corrupted state even of the saved document and thus make both, .autosave AND .afpub useless.

Especially since v.1.10.x I get more and more corrupted .afpub documents, never while working with them, but either, most of the time, when saving them or, rather rarely, when opening them – whereas all documents and resources are stored on 1 internal SSD and no external drive is used.

Whereas there exist app solutions that work reliable without any Save action triggered by the user and without resulting in corrupted files, for instance Apple's Preview.app and TextEdit.app (+ offer restore previous file states form a hidden backup) or Adobe's Lightroom.app, whereas the latter even does not have a "Save" command (+ always saves with history until the user deletes this manually).

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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I'm not sure if its always the case, but when the error in the recovery file occurs and it says the file must be closed, you can click the X in the top right and close that error window and save the work to another location...  and then save it again as the named file in the original location. Don't take my word for it but I'm pretty sure we have a work around here.

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On 11/16/2022 at 11:16 PM, Ian R said:

when the error in the recovery file occurs and it says the file must be closed, you can click the X in the top right and close that error window and save the work to another location

Which X do you mean? My most common problem when this error occurs with "Save" is that when I close the message (via "Okay"), the document is immediately closed and a frozen app is left with the save process bar at its end. I then have to force quit the app in order to continue with any further attempt.

1370502100_lostmustclose2022-11-04um05_15_51.thumb.jpg.5dad103555d9d39d69bd2e4596c78a4f.jpg

1917077717_lostmustclosefreeze2022-11-04um05_16_02.thumb.jpg.a909d2a5ec15558aee503f69ae99de3d.jpg

Then, if recover on app relaunch doesn't bring the document back, it is often followed by a "corrupted document" error message when reopening that "saved" document, …

1174295947_mustcloseA2022-10-21um22_11_04.jpg.2bb28f7dca97de3efa91063f6112532f.jpg

… even if the last modification date of the affected document was not touched by this recently failed Save action.

1504890072_2022-11-04mustclosewhileopening.thumb.jpg.8fd0a7b248bd1f343d4953d72ac49b3d.jpg

1412013463_2022-11-04um14_19.232022-11-04mustclosewhileopening2.jpg.ef2e1400d3d18fda0fe4fd58c097c1aa.jpg

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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  • 2 months later...
On 11/18/2022 at 6:15 PM, thomaso said:

Which X do you mean? My most common problem when this error occurs with "Save" is that when I close the message (via "Okay"), the document is immediately closed and a frozen app is left with the save process bar at its end. I then have to force quit the app in order to continue with any further attempt.

1370502100_lostmustclose2022-11-04um05_15_51.thumb.jpg.5dad103555d9d39d69bd2e4596c78a4f.jpg

1917077717_lostmustclosefreeze2022-11-04um05_16_02.thumb.jpg.a909d2a5ec15558aee503f69ae99de3d.jpg

Then, if recover on app relaunch doesn't bring the document back, it is often followed by a "corrupted document" error message when reopening that "saved" document, …

1174295947_mustcloseA2022-10-21um22_11_04.jpg.2bb28f7dca97de3efa91063f6112532f.jpg

… even if the last modification date of the affected document was not touched by this recently failed Save action.

1504890072_2022-11-04mustclosewhileopening.thumb.jpg.8fd0a7b248bd1f343d4953d72ac49b3d.jpg

1412013463_2022-11-04um14_19.232022-11-04mustclosewhileopening2.jpg.ef2e1400d3d18fda0fe4fd58c097c1aa.jpg

Apologies I am on PC and there is a close icon in the top right. When on PC If this is clicked then the 'failed to load document...' box closes and the file stays open. One can then save a copy and saving the file into the original location as the original file name works. I am assuming you are using the Mac version?

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3 minutes ago, Ian R said:

a close icon in the top right. When on PC If this is clicked then the 'failed to load document...' box closes and the file stays open.

This is impossible on Mac. As the greyed-out app interface (toolbar) in my screenshot shows, not only this dialogue must be confirmed by pressing "Okay" before the app accepts any other user action, it also may close dialog AND the document, leaving an empty main window but still showing the running / frozen "Save" process. So, there is nothing left which could get saved, especially because this state requires to force-quit the app.

But also without a frozen "Save" process the "Failed to load" dialog window does not allow any user action different than confirming "Okay", while pressing "Okay" immediately closes the document, too, and thus not leaving a chance to restart the "Save" process.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 1/22/2023 at 1:06 PM, thomaso said:

This is impossible on Mac. As the greyed-out app interface (toolbar) in my screenshot shows, not only this dialogue must be confirmed by pressing "Okay" before the app accepts any other user action, it also may close dialog AND the document, leaving an empty main window but still showing the running / frozen "Save" process. So, there is nothing left which could get saved, especially because this state requires to force-quit the app.

But also without a frozen "Save" process the "Failed to load" dialog window does not allow any user action different than confirming "Okay", while pressing "Okay" immediately closes the document, too, and thus not leaving a chance to restart the "Save" process.

Yes sorry I was talking about PC. However, even on the new V2 of Photo it does the same, and it sometimes even closes the program without a chance of performing the workaround close I mentioned

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

I went back to using AP1 because it was at least more stable than AP2.. However, I just lost about 2 hours work because the auto recovery file corrupted the file I was working on,with no option for a recovery dialogue box appeared upon next opening, only that the file is corrupted. What are we to think of Affinity development if we are being ignored in such a vital situation? Auto recovery saving was set to the standard 300 seconds, but what good is an auto recovery option if it corrupts the original file such that it cannot be opened at all? How many users are actually experiencing this? Is there anyone from Affinity acknowledging this please? I know there has been staff in this thread but that is about the recovery backup interval, not about the fact of this bug corrupting files.

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