I forgot to save one of my files, is it possible to recover it back, because I really need it.

[tymyron33]

I was working on a school project, then I didn't save the latest edits I made to it. 2 hours of work gone. 

[stokerg]

Hi @tymyron33and Welcome to the Forums,

You might get lucky when you reopen Affinity and re-open the same file you were working on, as when app closes or crashes without your document being saved, next time you open the file you should get a message about a Recovery file being found and this will recover the unsaved edits up to the last time it auto-saved.

If you don't see this message, then there isn't anything else that can be done  

[NotMyFault]

In addition to what stokerg explained, you might try to take charge at your own and open the directory where the "recovery" files are stored.

Assuming you used Photo. Otherwise replace "Photo" by "Designer" or "Publisher"

This will help if even if you deleted/moved/renamed the source file.

On Windows, it is

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\1.0\autosave

Should look similar to this:

Try to find the lost file by "Date Modified". Copy it to a new location, and change the extension from autosave to .afphoto.

Then open that file with Affinity Photo.

If the filename extension is not shown, you may need to deactivate the "View>Options>View>Hide extensions for known file types" setting of Windows File Explorer.

Edited October 7, 2021 by NotMyFault

[jeffers]

That is really useful for future reference for the likes of us who can be casual in our work. Thank you.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, jeffers said:

That is really useful for future reference for the likes of us who can be casual in our work. Thank you.

Note, though, that if you close a document and respond "no" when asked if you want to save it, the Affinity application will delete that file if it works correctly. So normally you will not have an autosave file for a file that you've successfully closed. They really are intended for cases where the application or your OS crashed.

[tymyron33]

Thank You guys for the help, but  I cant seem to open %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\1.0\autosave I think its because I have Affinity on a D drive, and I havent organized that very well.  

EDIT: Never mind, It worked, but It was opened the new one I made after I forgot to save. It works but not the file I needed. Anyway, I now know what to do in the future. Thanks a lot guys

 

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

Copy it to a new location, and change the extension from autosave to .afphoto.

I have tried this a few times in the Mac versions but it does not seem to work -- I always get an error of some kind, like that it is a linked file but the parent can't be found, or that it is not an Affinity document, or that it is corrupted.

I think this is because what is saved in the autosave file is different for the Mac versions than in the Windows ones -- on my Mac, often the file size of the autosave file is just a small fraction of what I would expect if it included the complete version of the file, like in the tens or hundreds of KB for a 10+ MB document. 

[walt.farrell]

55 minutes ago, R C-R said:

on my Mac, often the file size of the autosave file is just a small fraction of what I would expect if it included the complete version of the file, like in the tens or hundreds of KB for a 10+ MB document.

For either OS, the file will be complete only if it's an autosave of a never saved file (that is, for a file you just created using File > New). If you open an existing file, I think the autosave will just have a delta between the original and the current working version, which could be much smaller.

[R C-R]

44 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

For either OS, the file will be complete only if it's an autosave of a never saved file (that is, for a file you just created using File > New).

Hmmm. In AD on my Mac, I set the auto-save interval to the minimum of 30 seconds, used File > New to create a new document, added several rectangles & other shapes to it, in the Pixel persona added a few pixel layers with lots of complex brush strokes & some erasures to them, & waited a few minutes to see how large the autosave file would become.

It originally was just 72 bytes, & its file size still has not changed even now, 10+ minutes since I last touched it.

There is no way it contained a complete file, not in just 72 bytes!

[Old Bruce]

I think the Autosave only actually works when we have a crash. So maybe Make a document save it and add some stuff. Wait and then do something to make it crash. Then see how large the autosave file is.

A recipe to make any of the applications crash is to try and make a new document with a dpi of 99999999999999999+ pixels per inch. Can't remember the exact number of nines needed.

[R C-R]

5 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

I think the Autosave only actually works when we have a crash. So maybe Make a document save it and add some stuff. Wait and then do something to make it crash. Then see how large the autosave file is.

Walt said the autosave file would be complete only if a new document was not saved. So since it would have to be complete for the rename trick to work, I was testing how large the autosave file would get if I never saved the new document, but it never grew larger than 72 bytes, which could not possibly be large enough for everything I added to it.

 I don't think crashing the app will change that.

[NotMyFault]

9 hours ago, tymyron33 said:

Thank You guys for the help, but  I cant seem to open  %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\1.0\autosave  I think its because I have Affinity on a D drive, and I havent organized that very well.  

EDIT: Never mind, It worked, but It was opened the new one I made after I forgot to save. It works but not the file I needed. Anyway, I now know what to do in the future. Thanks a lot guys

 

To open that path,

1. select it (without trailing blanks), must look like this:
2. Copy by Crtl-C (or mouse, right-click, copy)
3. press Windows-Key, (or Click with mouse on "Start" Button, normally bottom left corner)
4. press Ctrl-V,
5. press Enter

This works independently from the Drive where Affinity is installed. But all assumes that you are using Affinity Photo.

If it still does not work: try the parent folder instead for step 1.

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Affinity

[Alfred]

18 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

press Windows-Key, (or Click with mouse on "Start" Button, normally bottom left corner)

Did you mean to type
Windows-Key + R
?

The Windows key on its own displays the Start menu, not the Run dialog.

21 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Affinity

Alternatively:

%AppData%\Affinity

which is somewhat shorter but just as effective.

[walt.farrell]

13 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Did you mean to type
Windows-Key + R
?

If you simply press the Windows key, or click the Start icon, you get the Start menu.

In the Start menu, you can simply start typing the name of something, and if the name you type is the name of a directory, like %AppData%\Affinity, then you'll get a File Explorer dialog of that directory. It's a slightly shorter way of getting the same thing as Windows key + R, in this case.

[NotMyFault]

15 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Did you mean to type
Windows-Key + R
?

Works with R or without R for me.