All my saved files and folders were deleted off my computer after shutting down

[CYthePotato]

Good day all,

 

I just got Affinity Designer the other day and had been working away on multiple projects. I saved all the files, both as Affinity Designer Files as well as PNG images --even went back into them before I headed off for the night. So given I was done working I shut down my computer (as I normally do) and when I came back to it this morning it was all gone. The file folder I created now is blank/ empty, any trace of the AF files are gone along with the PNG ones (they aren't in the trash bin either, tried searching my computer for them with no luck)! I have no idea what to do --is there something I'm missing? Is this an issue anyone else has had?  
If this is a bug, does that mean all that work lost? Is there anyway to recover it? 
In the future, should I be saving things to flash drives instead? I'm terrified that this will happen again and quite heartbroken to have lost those files. I've got work for a client due in the coming week and I'm fearful now of using this program if my files might just up and disappear again if saved onto my computer. 

 

Many thanks for your time. 

Hope you all have a wonderful day! C:  

[emmrecs01]

@CYthePotato

Welcome to the Affinity forums.

You've posted to the Designer Bugs on Windows forum so I will assume that is your OS.  From what you have written I can see no point at which you have made any mistake which might have caused such a disaster to occur!  It is certainly not something I have ever seen on my Win 10 machine and I feel sure the forum would be inundated with posts from very angry users if it were a widespread problem.

So, either,
something must have happened to your computer between the time you finished your work and shut the computer down and the time when you booted it again and discovered the problem.  Since it was off no Windows Update could have downloaded and installed in the meantime - it is not unknown for at least some of these to create file-access problems, amongst others - and no "cleaning" software could have similarly run overnight.

Or,
what chance is there that the files, despite you creating a dedicated folder for them, were actually saved to a completely different location?  You say you tried searching for them with no luck; for such an in-depth search of everything on my computer I use this free utility.  Perhaps it might be worth giving this a go?

HTH

Jeff

[AlanPickup]

Just out of curiosity were you working on two different machines with cloud synch. I have had, what I thought were missing files, and it was becuase of synch issues between the cloud and the two machines?

[Callum]

Hi CYthePotato,

I can assure you this issue hasn't been caused by Affinity as its not possible for the app to delete files save on your computer. I would recommend trying the suggestions found in @emmrecs01's post.

Thanks

C

[CliveH]

In addition to the above, what happens if you open Designer and go to File ----> Open Recent?   That should show you a list of recently used files - if it does then can you access them that way?