Restore unsaved .afpub from "autosaved" (et al.) ?

[thomaso]

Is there a way to restore a manually not saved state of an APub document if temporary files are available in a backup?

I did not save a yesterday document before closing APub today. So I copied the files in the folders "autosave" and "temp"  from a backup back to "~/Library/Application Support/Affinity Publisher". – This appears to be insufficient to restore the document.

Does one know if there are further files or folders at a different location which may be used to restore a document? (macOS)

[Dan C]

Hi @thomaso 

I believe you can change the file format of the Autosave/temp documents to .afpub and they can then be opened in Affinity like regular documents.

Does this help you to recover your file?

[walt.farrell]

It's curious, @thomaso, that Publisher didn't offer to reopen the file when you restarted it.

However, the way that works is a bit complicated and possibly unexpected. If Publisher (or other Affinity applications) crash and you have the file recovery option active, then when you restart the application:

• It should (and does, for me) prompt to restore any active files that you had never Saved. That is, unnamed files are recovered upon application restart.
• For files that had been previously saved, that is, which have a name, you are not prompted to recover until you try to Open the original file. At that point the application will notice the recovery file and open to offer it instead.

In my experience, @Dan C is right that you can change the file extension of the autosave files to .afpub (or other Affinity file types) and then you can Open them. If the original file had been saved previously, it must still exist or the Open will fail.

But if Publisher is not offering to do that upon Restart for a previously unsaved file then something is wrong.

[thomaso]

Unfortunately it doesn't work. It causes an error message "Failed to open file ... The file is a linked file, but the parent file could not be found."

The autosave folder in the according backup contains 4 files *, whereas only 1 .afpub has been open before closing the app. Each of this 4 files cause this message, as if none of them was from the former .afpub document. In the .afpub were 2 linked resources used (each 3-6 times), both were JPGs. I assume a linked JPG would not create an .autosave file (correct?), this lets me think the error message is not precise, if one of the .autosave files should be the missed "parent file".
* 1 of the 4 .autosave files has a modification date before I created the not safed file, possibly a leftover from an earlier crash

[thomaso]

@Walt, there was no crash. I had closed the app without saving the yesterday work in the open document. I do have a few backups of those temp files while and after creating the .afpub yesterday and before closing today.

[walt.farrell]

26 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I had closed the app without saving the yesterday work in the open document.

If you close the application, and you have unsaved changes, it is supposed to prompt you whether to Save them or not. If you say No, it is supposed to delete any autosave files associated with that document. So at that point it is unlikely that any of the files you have available is the one you want.

[thomaso]

@Walt, as mentioned above, I have various (theoretically "hourly") backups of those folders, from different times yesterday or this morning before closing the app. So I assume various "current" states of this unsafed document would be in any of them.

[Dan C]

Thanks for trying that, and for the info!

If you could upload these autosave files to the below link then I'll forward them to our Developers to see if we can 'reassemble' this file from the data you have backed up

https://www.dropbox.com/request/0RXne1ITD3VqAU3daGO7

[thomaso]

@Dan C, thanks for the offer. A zip is uploaded, including a screenshot of the missing content.

Fortunately the unsaved work was a test page only, I even don't know whether I will need this again. I mainly was interested to discover a possible restore process with using these backupped files, to be prepared if it becomes more important one day. So if the Developers will be able to restore I am glad, but actually, currently more interested to know of the procedure as a DIY process than in this specific document. Thanks!

[Dan C]

Thanks for that, I've forwarded your files to the devs and I'll be sure to reply here with any information they can provide

17 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I mainly was interested to discover a possible restore process with using these backupped files, to be prepared if it becomes more important one day.

Usually, the above method works and the file can be opened instantly, this is the first time I've seen the above error message so I'm not certain what's causing this - however you should be able to follow this procedure again in the future with hopefully more fruitful results!

[Dan C]

@thomaso I've had a response from one of the Publisher devs -

The autosave files provided are unfortunately only incremental backups from the main (parent) file. If this parent file has been lost nothing can be restored.

My apologies!

[thomaso]

Thank you, that's good to know. – What does it mean (say?) if there is no parent file in the autosave folder?

Would the parent file always stay together with its incremental .autosave files? Or does the parent file get saved only once, e.g. at the moment the document is opened, and other states are only saved as incremental? So, could the parent file be in an earlier backup folder of this session?

Would it work at all to automatically assemble a parent file correctly with its incremental .autosave files?

[Pšenda]

 

 

[thomaso]

On 3/19/2019 at 11:28 PM, Pšenda said:

On 3/19/2019 at 11:27 AM, R C-R said:

When I try that, it does not work:

autosave file is not unfortunately a backup/full copy of the whole unsaved afphoto file, but only record new and unsaved modifications. So he needs the original file, to which the unsaved edits will be added.

So it really serves only to rescue unsaved changes, not to rescue the lost file.

Thanks for the link, Pšenda, – do I understand right that the document, named above by Dan as "main (parent) file" and being missing in my autosave folder backup, never will be in the autosave folder during a current session? (unless a crash happens?)

So, if I have my saved .afpub document as main/parent but just not saved the most recent work:
How can I combine the parent .afpub document with the incremental .autosave files? (and: is the backuped "temp" folder content of use/need for this?)

[Pšenda]

9 minutes ago, thomaso said:

and being missing in my autosave folder backup

Main/work document does not have to be saved in the autosave folder. There are only incremental autosave files in this folder, which contain a record of performed operations/adjustments since the last "Save", when all performed changes were saved in the main/work document.

If you look at the autosave file, it initially contains a link to the main / work file, to which incrementally recorded modifications may be added.

To restore unsaved work, the main/work document is therefore absolutely necessary, so that incrementally saved jobs backups can be added to it.

[thomaso]

> To restore unsaved work, the main/work document is therefore absolutely necessary, so that incrementally saved jobs backups can be added to it.

Yes, I do have this main/parent .afpub. – But I don't know how to combine the incremental files with this afpub.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

, I do have this main/parent .afpub. – But I don't know how to combine the incremental files with this afpub

If you have the main document, in its original location, and you change the file extension of the autosave file, and open the autosave file, Affinity will (in my experience) combine them for you. 

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

If you have the main document, in its original location, and you change the file extension of the autosave file, and open the autosave file, Affinity will (in my experience) combine them for you. 

I have never seen that work on my Mac.

[thomaso]

23 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

If you have the main document, in its original location, and you change the file extension of the autosave file, and open the autosave file, Affinity will (in my experience) combine them for you. 

Doesn't work here. – There are two variants of messages:

"The file is already open in another application."

"The file is a linked file, but the parent file could not be found."

In fact there is definitely no "other application" but the app itself which has the parent file opened already. I tried both ways: with the parent file opened and not opened. In both these screenshot the .afpub was opened. If it is closed then only the second ("parent") message occurs. The "already open" message appears when I launch the app with a double click on the incremental file (the app is set to open recently used files again).

@R C-R, did you get same/ similar results in your trials?

@Dan C, I just uploaded to your dropbox the main&parent file ("v687 .afpub") additionally to the .autosave files. Could you ask the Developers once more whether they can restore it – and, if it works in Windows, how to do it on mac, to avoid the messages above? – Thank you!

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

@R C-R, did you get same/ similar results in your trials?

I have seen similar ones to your second one, but I am not testing this with any of the betas ... & if you are then please make that clear from the beginning (& possibly consider posting to the appropriate beta forum instead of or in addition to here).

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

betas ... & if you are then please make that clear from the beginning (& possibly consider posting to the appropriate beta forum instead of or in addition to here).

Sorry if I confused you or anybody else. There were two reasons which let me post my question here in the Questions Forum:

– Current beta document files can be opened by the current retail app, too. So I assume the answer or solution would be the same for both versions.
– The beta forum seems to be meant for bugs, as its forum's subline says: "Post your bugs found using Affinity Publisher Beta builds on Mac OSX platforms".

[Dan C]

Apologies for the delayed response here @thomaso - I can confirm your main 'parent' file is with our developers and once I receive a response I'll be sure to update you here

[Once408]

I think you can go File, then Open recent

[Komatös]

Hi, @Once408and welcome to the forums.

Open recent only works for file(s) that could be saved properly beforehand. If you have switched on automatic saving and the programme crashes, you may be lucky that when you start the programme or create a new file, the programme gives you a hint that there is an unsaved file and whether you want to restore it. However, I do not know whether this behaviour applies equally to Windows, MacOS or IOS. 

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, Komatös said:

However, I do not know whether this behaviour applies equally to Windows, MacOS or IOS.

Windows and Mac, yes. IOS, I'm not sure.

For Windows or Mac, if there were files open when the program crashes, then for any unnamed, never manually saved, files with autosave versions available the program will ask if you want to restore them. But for files that have names (had been previously saved) you'll only be offered the chance to recover the autosaved file when you Open the original file again.