Saving changes +closing file = loosing changes

[Vosje]

😶

So, something happened just now and now I’ve lost days of work… I want to understand what went wrong, is it a bug or did I do something wrong?

When using custom brushes in Affinity my layers often get corrupted, as in, parts of a layer disappear when I paint and undoing doesn’t restore the missing part. That’s why I often save my file, to be able to revert back if that happens. However just now, when my layer got corrupted, I closed the file without saving and when I opened it again I saw a version of it from like DAYS ago! I am 100000000% sure I’ve saved it like a thousand times since. But this is a very old version of it, not reflecting all the - saved by hand - changes! How can this have happened? Affinity Designer did crash on me a few days ago. I had to restart it and reopen the file. It’s even possible that the version of the file I’m seeing now was the way it was when the program crashed… But still, where did all my saved changes go?

[Dan C]

Hi @Vosje,

14 hours ago, Vosje said:

When using custom brushes in Affinity my layers often get corrupted, as in, parts of a layer disappear when I paint and undoing doesn’t restore the missing part.

I can confirm this is logged with our developers, as we've been able to replicate this issue when using high quality (ie memory intensive) pixel brushes and our developers are looking at ways to resolve this, my apologies for any inconveniences caused in the meantime.

14 hours ago, Vosje said:

I closed the file without saving and when I opened it again I saw a version of it from like DAYS ago!

This isn't something I've heard of happening before - is it only the one layer that seems to have reverted to a much earlier state, or is it the whole document, including the pixel layer?

It's possible that the app simply looked for the last 'autosave' file that did not have any corrupted pixel data and loaded this when opening the document from the homescreen.

Assuming you have multiple backups saved locally, outside of the Affinity app, if you 'close' the file in Affinity Designer and then reopen it directly from your saved location in Files, which version of the file do you see - the one you saved most recently, or the older file? (please ensure you have a version saved in Files before 'closing' the document, else the file may be lost)

How are you saving the file? Ie from the 'Save' option when editing the file, or do you return to the homescreen before selecting the 'Save' option there?

Many thanks in advance!

[Vosje]

Hi @Dan C, thanks for your reply! The whole file was changed, not only the corrupted layer, it’s like it got completely reverted to the way it was days ago. With this file, I didn’t have to close and reopen it again before this one time because of corrupted layers, it happened just now for the first time. What I mean to say, because it got reverted to days ago and layer corruption only happened just now, there must have been an autosave version which is more recent. I really feel like the version I’m seeing now is from the time that Affinity crashed (happens from time to time, not too often). But what puzzels me is why my file looks like it has never been saved since that crash!

Unfortunately, I only had only one copy of this file stored in Affinity map - looks like I’ve done everything wrong, but working on an iPad is rather new to me and I didn’t expect this... When I try to open this file directly from the location, I see the wrong, old version. I save my files by ticking Save while editing, not from homescreen. There is something else strange that I’ve noticed recently: when I create a new file and rename it afterwards (from homescreen), the name is changed in the app (so it seems like renaming was done successfully), but when I actually browse my files, some of them have names like Untitled, Untitled_1, Untitled_2 etc. Thus, actual names of files do NOT reflect renaming done via Affinity. This is true for some of the files, but not all of them, some do have correct names. Maybe these two issues are somehow related? Affinity failed to actually rename the files, and also failed to actually save that one file despite me using the Save function?

[Dan C]

No problem at all, many thanks for confirming that for me and for the further information provided!

2 hours ago, Vosje said:

I really feel like the version I’m seeing now is from the time that Affinity crashed

It sounds as though the application may have reverted the file to it's last known 'safe' autosave, before this crash happened - which would usually only happen if the app did not find the most recent autosave file, or the latest autosave had become corrupted - but without access to your iPad directly I can only make guesses here unfortunately.

2 hours ago, Vosje said:

When I try to open this file directly from the location, I see the wrong, old version. I save my files by ticking Save while editing, not from homescreen.

Thanks for confirming that and I'm sorry to hear this - we can try pulling the autosave files from your iPad to see if any are a more up-to-date version of this file, if you wish? Please note this will require access to a desktop PC, alongside your iPad.

I would also recommend saving from the Homescreen, rather than within the document view.

2 hours ago, Vosje said:

There is something else strange that I’ve noticed recently: when I create a new file and rename it afterwards (from homescreen), the name is changed in the app (so it seems like renaming was done successfully), but when I actually browse my files, some of them have names like Untitled, Untitled_1, Untitled_2 etc. Thus, actual names of files do NOT reflect renaming done via Affinity. This is true for some of the files, but not all of them, some do have correct names.

I can confirm this is a separate issue that is already logged with our developers, essentially the name of the file will change within the app, but the name of the file when it was saved for the first time from the Affinity application will be retained, no matter what you change the name of the file to within the app itself.

This issue is already logged with our developers, so I'll update that report on your behalf now

[Vosje]

Hi @Dan C, thanks a lot for your offer on trying to pull autosave files! However, I am already busy redoing lost progress, I guess in the end that will be faster than going the iPad route (since I’ve only recently started using it it’ll probably cost me some time figuring all the tech stuff). I will also be sure to keep in mind all the tips you named and hopefully won’t experience anything like this in the future. Thanks again for your time and help.

[Vosje]

Hi @Dan C, I've experienced the same thing again, Affinity crashing and my saved changes disappearing. The funny thing is that now it crashed like a second after I saved my file, so I knew very well how my image looked like when I saved it. When I restarted Designer after this crash, it clearly opened an older version of my file (last auto saved version, probably). I decided to experiment a little bit: I saved my file as a copy and gave it a different filename (just to have this version on hand in case I need it). Then, I closed the original file without saving my changes, and opened this file again directly from its location. Now, it DID open the latest (saved by me) version, the one I saved just a moment before the crash.

I am not exactly sure what went wrong before this time (see the beginning of this thread), maybe I saved the old version of the file before trying to open it again, and also I'm not sure exactly why the app opened a days old version (and not a recent autosave file), but! It's clear that after a crash Affinity won't use the last - manually - saved version of the file. Instead, it opens an autosave version and that while the manually saved version is perfectly fine and not corrupted! Why is this happening? Maybe the app should check when the file was saved manually and if that was AFTER the most recent autosave version, Affinity should open that instead? As in, always open the latest version, NOT the latest autosave version?

[Gridcoder]

Hi all,

I have just experienced a similar issues as @Vosje is describing here.

I have a project that I saved in iCloud so that I can work on it both on the Mac and on my iPad. Now I have been working on my iPad exclusively for the past couple of days.
Yesterday I went to open the project on my Mac but it would only show me my older content, not the recent changes I made over the past couple of days on my iPad.
So I thought that maybe I need to close the project on my iPad so that the Mac can see the recent changes.
Unfortunately when I tried to reopen the same project back on my iPad it would show me the same older content from a few days ago that it shows on the Mac as well.
It seems like I have now lost a couple of days of work

During the last couple of days of working in my iPad, I saved constantly. I even created a snapshot today in the history studio.
Can my recent changes still be recovered somehow? Is there maybe a way to "revert" to different saved versions?

I can recreate the stuff in a couple of hours so it's not that big a deal if I lost them but I want to be able to switch between Mac and iPad as needed without me losing changes. Is this a known issues that is going to be fixed in the next update maybe? If it is I guess I can stop switching until this is fixed.

[Dan C]

Apologies for the delayed response here @Vosje as I have been out of the office for a few days.

I've been testing this personally trying to replicate the behaviour you're experiencing, and with an autosave interval set to 30 seconds, periodically saving the document manually and force crashing the app at different intervals after editing/saving, I'm yet to reproduce this issue.

However as this has happened multiple times, and certainly isn't expected behaviour, I'm going to get this logged with our QA team for further investigation - to try and determine the exact cause of this such that our developers can hopefully stop this from happening in the future.

On 4/16/2022 at 6:05 PM, Vosje said:

It's clear that after a crash Affinity won't use the last - manually - saved version of the file. Instead, it opens an autosave version and that while the manually saved version is perfectly fine and not corrupted! Why is this happening?

If the app crashes during / very shortly after saving then I would expect an autosave file to be used, as the app would use this first, before using the latest manual saved version of the file, as the issue causing the crash may have been 'saved' with the document, and may not be part of the autosave file, which is why the app starts here - however this should still be the very latest autosave file, and I'm not sure currently why this isn't happening for you, which will be part of the above mentioned log.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Hi @Gridcoder,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums

This sounds slightly different to the report from Vosje, as overwriting the file in iCloud is not automatic, depending on your Affinity app settings.

Firstly, can you please confirm for me, did you use 'Open from Cloud' or 'Import from Cloud' on the iPad when loading your iCloud document?

Secondly, if you open the Affinity app and select Settings (the cog icon in the top right of the homescreen), you should see a setting for 'Default Save Location', what is this set to please?

Finally, if you open Files outside of the Affinity app, then navigate to the Affinity Designer folder on your iPad, are there any documents saved here?

Many thanks in advance!

[Vosje]

Hi @Dan C, thanks for your reply! The last time it DID open a recent autosave version, not the days old one, it was definitely a very recent one (just not the most recent manually saved version, but I get your explanation on why Affinity would rather use an autosave version versus a manually saved one). So looks like my update reflects a normal and expected behaviour of the app (as in, if if crashes just moments after saving you'll most likely loose some changes because it will open the version that was automatically saved and not the one you just saved by hand).

Thanks for trying to replicate this, however maybe it won't even be possible, because this is very strange and since I wasn't paying exact attention to which steps I took with this file, there may be something that I'm missing...

[Dan C]

No problem at all, thanks for letting me know - hopefully our QA team will be able to better understand the exact cause of this so that our developers can improve the system in the future as I certainly understand the frustration this could cause.

Should you find any specific 'triggers' for this, please don't hesitate to update us here

[SusanM]

I am finding Affinity Designer is crashing a lot or not crashing but isn’t saving the latest version of a design when I export. It’s odd for sure. I wonder if it is because my iPad is getting older? Or if it’s a glitch in an update? 

[Dan C]

Hi @SusanM,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums

Sorry to hear you're having trouble!

On 10/15/2022 at 6:23 PM, SusanM said:

isn’t saving the latest version of a design when I export

I can confirm this is a known issue in the current version of Affinity on iPadOS, as outlined below:

Certain users have reported that the latest iPadOS 16 beta resolves this issue, so I would recommend updating to iPadOS 16 once it is publicly available to resolve this.

I hope this helps!

[Suzanne-DC]

I am going nuts with Affinity Photo--I save my file as layers, then I flatten the document and export it with a different name. But when I open the layers file, that I saved as layers, the layers are gone. I used photoshop for more than 10 years so I am not a newbie using this kind of program. This behavior is not acceptable.

[Vosje]

19 hours ago, Suzanne-DC said:

I am going nuts with Affinity Photo--I save my file as layers, then I flatten the document and export it with a different name. But when I open the layers file, that I saved as layers, the layers are gone. I used photoshop for more than 10 years so I am not a newbie using this kind of program. This behavior is not acceptable.

Hi, I'm not sure what may be causing is, however I have a suggestion that you could try to eliminate this problem: don't flatten your image before exporting at all. At least, I assume you export to JPG, PNG or some other format that doesn't need layers. On export, all layers will be flattened automatically, and your original image should be intact.

[walt.farrell]

On 2/6/2024 at 2:15 PM, Suzanne-DC said:

I am going nuts with Affinity Photo--I save my file as layers, then I flatten the document and export it with a different name. But when I open the layers file, that I saved as layers, the layers are gone. I used photoshop for more than 10 years so I am not a newbie using this kind of program. This behavior is not acceptable.

As Vosje mentioned, flattening the original may not be needed. So please tell us more about why you're doing that.

But if flattening is needed, possibly when you close the file after you flatten it and are prompted to Save it, you are choosing to save and are overwriting the version with layers.

[NotMyFault]

On 2/6/2024 at 9:15 PM, Suzanne-DC said:

I save my file as layers, then I flatten the document and export it with a different name

This sequence is extremely risky: if the app crashes for any reasons after the flattening process, or you forget to undo or export, then the last (auto-) saved version is the flattened one.

so never flatten while the original file is open, a receipt for potential disaster. At least use „save with history“.

so better sequences are:

• save a copy with different name with history, then flatten. The copy is the „new“ original / backup
• Use „merge visible“. 
• export with flattening selected in export settings (available for several formats), like svg and pdf.