All Work lost after reinstalling the app

[Hachmi]

Hello can someone help me ? 
the app was crashing and I couldn’t open it, I reinstalled the app and lost all my previous work on the app. Do you now a way to get them back ? 
thanks in advance,

[emmrecs01]

@Hachmi

Welcome to the Affinity forums.

Where exactly was your work saved before you uninstalled the app?  By default, I believe, the save location is within the iPad's sandbox; you have to specifically select a different location if you wish to ensure your work is not removed in the event that you need to uninstall and reinstall the app.  In other words, in your situation, if you did not save your work outside the sandbox I'm pretty certain it is not retrievable, sorry.

If I am wrong about this I am sure someone else will give you the right answer.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, emmrecs01 said:

 

Where exactly was your work saved before you uninstalled the app?  By default, I believe, the save location is within the iPad's sandbox; you have to specifically select a different location if you wish to ensure your work is not removed in the event that you need to uninstall and reinstall the app.  In other words, in your situation, if you did not save your work outside the sandbox I'm pretty certain it is not retrievable, sorry.

This is such a confusing user experience (and one that Apple doesn't much help to mitigate). Some apps such as Keynote, Pages, Ulysses, iA Writer, Linea, etc default to using iCloud for storage, either through iCloud Drive or iCloud sync (the former being accessible through the iCloud Files app/Finder). Other apps such as Procreate and Affinity Designer/Photo make use of the 'app sandbox' to store files, which has the benefit of always being available at the cost of being in a kind of 'file purgatory'. This 'space' only exists while the app is installed. If you uninstall the app everything in this space is lost unless you individually decide to also save the files to iCloud, Google Drive, etc.

It would be really helpful to know (visually/quickly) which files have been saved/open to iCloud Drive and which exist only in the app sandbox.  It would also be really helpful to know which files that have been opened from iCloud Drive are older/not synced with the ones currently opened. If I make a change to an iCloud Drive file using the desktop app iCloud does update the file across devices, but that change isn't reflected in the Affinity files gallery UI. If I then save the file that was already opened from iCloud Drive I will overwrite the more recent changes made on the desktop.

FYI the way some apps (such as Pixaki, iA Writer, Ulysses, etc) is to divide the files into visually distinct spaces; 'On My iPad' and 'iCloud Drive'. This makes it much easier to know where a file has been opened from and where it will be saved to. Having users loose all of their work because they didn't understand where their files were (or were not) saved to is a horrible user experience and greatly reduces trust in the application going forward.

[NotMyFault]

There is an option in settings of Photo to change the default save location to iCloud.

All vendors repeat the mantra to create backups before installing or removing any software. 
i know it hurts loosing important files from own mistakes, but hopefully this experience helps to take self-responsibility and actually backup on regular basis. The files App is your best friend to inspect storage locations.