Assets missing after crash

[evtonic3]

Anyone experienced this? I had just loaded several assets in Designer, then I had a freeze on the app which I had to force quit it, and then my assets were gone after that.

[tonyk11]

I'm having the same issue with Photo.  I just lost about 11 gb of assets after a scheduled computer restart.  I thought that once the assets were added to the Assets Panel, they were saved for good?

Thankfully, I'd created an Assets Collection and exported the majority of them, but I have to do a ton of reorganizing on importing the collection, and then add about 1/3 of them back to the panel.

[DWright]

The Assets are saved to a file called assets.propcol and this is located in the following locations and as these are application data files rather than program files these can sometimes be reset in a crash I recommend making a back up of these files 

Mac

~/Library/Application Support/Affinity Photo/user/assets.propcol

~/Library/Application Support/Affinity Designer/user/assets.propcol

Windows

%AppData%\Roaming\Affinity\Designer\1.0\user\assets.propcol

%AppData%\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\1.0\user\assets.propcol

[iuli]

@DWright

Hello, on iPad Affinity Designer while saving a design for laser cutting to ‘Assets’  the app froze, crashed and I’ve lost over a hundreds designs (everything I had in ‘Assets’ — instead the ‘iOS 12’ category is back despite deleting it months ago) most of them for good, with no backup. Probably not but before losing my minds completely I have to ask, there’s any chance to recover them?

Kind regards.

[BarbWire]

Same happened to me:
I spent the whole day on building asset files and unfortunately deleted some of the resources.... After a crash which happened for unknown reason all and everything is gone.
That´s really a desaster.
There should be a auto backup, if this is a known issue!

desperate greets
Barb

[praynat]

Yes Same to me. But it deleted all of the assets even those of previous session that I had saved. It should definitely be fixed.
It would be great to have a save button or something like that.

Good Luck!

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, praynat said:

It would be great to have a save button or something like that.

You have two ways of saving Assets, both reached from the Preferences (burger) menu for the Assets panel.

1. "Export Assets" will create a .afassets file for the currently selected Assets category and all its subcategories.
2. "Embed in current document" will embed all the Assets into an Affinity document, where you can recover them later by Opening the document.

[skmwrp]

Using AD 1.9 and just now found all of the assets that I had meticulously created are now gone.

Firetruck, I was not expecting this.

What the heck, Serif? No response to this?

[skmwrp]

On 6/5/2020 at 5:05 AM, DWright said:

The Assets are saved to a file called assets.propcol and this is located in the following locations and as these are application data files rather than program files these can sometimes be reset in a crash I recommend making a back up of these files 

Mac

~/Library/Application Support/Affinity Photo/user/assets.propcol

~/Library/Application Support/Affinity Designer/user/assets.propcol

Windows

%AppData%\Roaming\Affinity\Designer\1.0\user\assets.propcol

%AppData%\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\1.0\user\assets.propcol

I've gone to this location using Time Machine and I see no changes, all dated May 6, 2019 like they're default files. I don't see one instance where the Assets file grows or changes date. I even created a new Category, added some assets to it, quit, and the file still did not change, in size nor date.

So that can't be where the data is being stored.

Found the file is actually being saved in ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner/Data/Library/Application Support/user/

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, skmwrp said:

Found the file is actually being saved in ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner/Data/Library/Application Support/user/

Yes, they are stored in different locations depending on whether you purchased from Serif (Affinity Store) or Apple (Mac App Store):

 

[skmwrp]

• Mac App Store version: 
  • Affinity Photo: ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/Application Support/user/
  • Affinity Designer: ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner/Data/Library/Application Support/user/
  • Affinity Publisher: ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitypublisher/Data/Library/Application Support/user/
     
• Mac App Store version ( Big Sur ) :
  • Affinity Photo: ~/Library/Containers/Affinity Photo/Data/Library/Application Support/user/
  • Affinity Designer: ~/Library/Containers/Affinity Designer/Data/Library/Application Support/user/
  • Affinity Publisher: ~/Library/Containers/Affinity Publisher/Data/Library/Application Support/user/

The MAS location appears to be an alias to the MAS (Big Sur) location, but thanks for this information. Would've been nice to have been to told above rather than think all was lost.

[pyxelles]

I recently upgraded to Affinity Designer 1.9 (on Windows 10) and did a completely new install as I have been having problems at every launch where all my settings revert to the default factory settings. I thought the problem would be resolved with the new upgrade and account registration, but it appears to freeze more and I still get the same "There was an error loading your settings. Some settings may be inaccurate" error message. 

After my last launch of AD, I went to my asset library and noticed my entire asset library I had taken time to build (over 10 categories) with over 100 assets had all disappeared except the iOS assets. I also noticed the new free assets that I had downloaded from new AD 1.9 upgrade had also gone. However, when I went to my account, I downloaded them again and "re-synced" my library hoping my own assets would reappear but alas no. 

Those elements were invaluable to me because most of them were created spontaneously and I excitedly stored them there, including my entire custom KDP interior collection. I don't know whether to scream or cry. 😭. 

 I have located assets.propcol but what do I do with it?  I would really appreciate help to retrieve them, thanks

[skmwrp]

Depending where you found them, what size the file, and and what date it was modified, the assets.propcol might be of value or not. Hopefully, the one you found is of large file size and recently modified, which means it contains all of your assets.

Make a copy of it, just for backup, then place the file in the appropriate path listed right above your comment. Start Designer to let them load and check if your stuff is there.

If you have a backup running, like Time Machine, it would be best to find the assets file in there, from before the time you lost them, because my file in the paths above had been wiped back to defaults, which is a file of only about 10kb. If you have a large file from backup, you would just move that file into the appropriate path above.

Hope it works out for you.

[skmwrp]

Fortunately I wrote those paths down here in this forum because IT JUST HAPPENED TO ME AGAIN!

Making a shortcut to the folder on my desktop just to save me the time.

Will this be fixed soon?

[Estalfos]

This just happened in 1.9 iPad AD I lost all my assets  I had tons of pre done things I use regularly like my rulers, icons, labels and logos. I feel like crying cuz it’s was so so soooo much :@ how the heck do I get them back ?!

[Estalfos]

Assets are now totally unusable it won’t let me do anything it just crashes the whole app immediately haha the heck I do now ? Can I even te instal the app without loosing the hundred of file on it ? XD this is like a bad joke 

[walt.farrell]

10 minutes ago, Estalfos said:

Assets are now totally unusable it won’t let me do anything it just crashes the whole app immediately haha the heck I do now ? Can I even te instal the app without loosing the hundred of file on it ? XD this is like a bad joke 

You can reset the Assets to the factory defaults, which should let you run. And assuming you kept backups of the original files or exported backups of your Asset categories as .afasset files then you can restore them from those backups.

I've provided instructions in this post:

You can also make a backup of the complete assets file first, in case it works better in a future release. It's assets.propcol and this FAQ will help you find it:

 

[Marjolein]

And yes, I also lost weeks of work by losing my assets for no reason at all. The feature can't be trusted. 

[Mirela]

On 8/14/2021 at 8:01 PM, Marjolein said:

And yes, I also lost weeks of work by losing my assets for no reason at all. The feature can't be trusted. 

The same thing happened to me, I lost my assets twice in 4 months and more recently I lost the drawings from the last 10 days. I am very disappointed...

iPad pro OS 15.1 AD version: 1.10.3

[Heyhi]

This happened to me twice as well, on my iPad.

if there is a way to recover these, please let me know. most are backed up, some are not.

thanks