my entire drawing got deleted?????

[bunnnali]

Hello! I’ve been using Affinity Designed V2 for a few months now, and I used V1 for years prior. I really enjoy both apps, but I ran into a problem today while I was in the midst of finishing up a commission. The app randomly crashed, which wouldn’t of been a problem as I had saved a few minutes beforehand, but when I reopened the app and tried to open my file nothing loads. My other files load perfectly fine, its just this one. All it lets me do is rename it. I had spent a long time on this so I find this very distressing. Attached is a screen recording of the problem in question. Is there any way for me to get my drawing back? I tried everything I could think of, from resetting my app, to my ipad, to trying to open the file from my icloud drive, etc. 

 

[Lee D]

@bunnnaliWelcome to the forums.

From your video the document doesn't seem to be showing a canvas size or colour mode, I suspect the file may be corrupt/lost. You mentioned saving the document, so you should have a file you can load back in to continue to working on from the location you chose to save to.

There are third party apps such as iMazing that allows you to access the apps sandboxed internal storage. This is where docs are temporarily stored that haven't been saved by using the Save option on the docs burger menu.

[Tilda Rose]

I've been having this same issue - I was working on a commission and the app kept crashing and I would lose all the progress I made on the illustration. I thought at first it was crashing because I was working on a bigger file, but then it kept doing it on smaller files at well that I know other drawing apps can handle. It left me wondering why isn't there a save button on the app when you are working on a file (without exporting it somewhere)? Am I missing something? I would exit out of the file every few minutes after the app crashed for the second time. The crashing makes me feel very uneasy about working on commissions on the Affinity Photo iPad app. And I'm unsure if downloading another app to fish out the lost work from the iPad's internal storage every time it crashes is a good solution to that. 

[Frozen Death Knight]

@bunnnali I don't know if it works for iPad, but on desktop it is possible to salvage some of the work from corrupted files by using Publisher and linking the corrupted file to a new document. I believe that iPad and desktop files are the same, so if you own Publisher on the desktop I would recommend trying that there or ask Serif support about doing it for you.

 

[Tilda Rose]

@Serif Info Bot The problem is still happening. This time when I tried to open up a file that I was working on, instead of opening the file it showed this screen (attached). Basically just showing the file as just the text? This hasn't happened before, but I'm again not able to recover the file I was working on. 

[Lee D]

@Tilda Rose Have you been saving the files you've been working on? This is done from the Live Docs screen, tap the 'burger' icon and then Save. You'll be prompted to provide a Filename and when you tap Save you can specify a save location, such as On My iPad or a cloud service. If so you should be able to open these files hopefully without losing to much.

If you don't go through this process when working on a file. When exiting, the file is temporarily saved within the apps sandboxed environment. If for whatever reason the document becomes corrupt, it may not be able to be recovered from this location.

You can try using third party apps on a Desktop such as iMazing using the steps below.

Download iMazing (only the free trial is needed) https://imazing.com/
•    Connect your iPad to your computer
•    Make a backup of the iPad through iMazing
•    In the top right click the iPad's name and select the backup you've just made
•    Inside the folder Apps > Affinity Photo 2 > Library > Application Support > com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2.ios > 
•    Drag the Autosave folder to your desktop (iMazing trial allows 10 drag operations, so doing the folder will get all files exported at once)
•    Rename the files inside this folder from .autosave to .afphoto and then try opening these files (if you don't own Affinity on the desktop, you will need to transfer these back to the iPad to be opened, using a cloud service etc)

[Tilda Rose]

Hi @Lee D, 

Your answer to this problem is concerning. I am trying to save the files on the iPad app, but in order to save you have to exit out of the working file, then save to an external storage on the main landing page. The problem is that 70% of the time when I try to exit from my working file to the main page to save, all of my progress is lost. Every time I try to exit to save my work, my progress may or may not be lost. How do I back up and save something that is already gone when I try to save the file? There’s nothing left to save!

It feels like you haven’t even used the Affinity iPad apps if this is your answer to the problem. You, as an admin of Affinity, are telling me to use a paid third party app to fix a problem within your programs. That is absurd. I have never encountered this problem with Procreate or Adobe Fresco, and right now I'm using Fresco because the Affinity iPad app is way too unreliable for me as a working illustrator. It's not like this is a once in a while problem, I am constantly losing progress on my work because of these files becoming "corrupted." I'm at the point where I'm crossing my fingers when I exit out of the working file.

Can you tell me why the files are becoming corrupted so often? There needs to be an actual save function when you are working in the file (and I don’t mean an export button, which is basically your “save” function in the main menu). It seems like I'm not the only one having this issue.

[Lee D]

@Tilda Rose The workflow I suggested does require the use of a third party app (only free trial required) to access the iPads sandboxed storage area, due to how this area is designed. This workflow is more for when documents are no longer showing on the Live Docs screen but can also be used in other circumstances.

In terms of the steps required to save a document in our iPad apps, this is the workflow as covered in the apps help article.

In reference to your report of edits being lost. Can you do a screen recording, showing the loss progress with your files? If it can show you editing a document, switching to the Live Docs screen and then opening the same document again and seeing that the previous edits are no longer showing. Also, If you have a particular workflow that also causes this to occur, please let me know so I can try reproducing it on our iPads.

A copy of one of your files that you seem to be having issues with would also be beneficial.

[CharlotteArt]

Im having the exact same problem on iPad, exiting files to gallery view to Save As is causing a lot of problems with progress loss, particularly if my iPad battery is low. I will attempt to video and produce files over the coming days but this 100% was never an issue when you could use Save As while working on a file in the previous version. Please please consider reinstating this option!

The majority of crashes I’ve experienced (in both versions) have been when exiting a file and going into gallery view, it makes it very scary to not be able to save an afphoto version of a commission before going into gallery view in V2. I’m using Affinity Photo for iPad for the majority of my work every day and I’ve actually lost count of the times I’ve lost progress on files since working in V2.

thanks

CTM

[TonyO]

I'm running an old 2018 ipad pro, and I've noticed that when i switch between too many apps, the iPad's memory will fill up and start force-closing minimized apps in the order they were opened, which is kind of the iOS way of doing things. This probably isn't much of a problem on newer M1 and above models, but on my old one, i had to get into the habit of exiting the Designer drawing space back to the list of files before switching around apps so my file would for sure save... If i didnt, there was a chance ADF would close out and not save any changes made since the last save. I blame iOS's multitasking and my cheapness when it comes to upgrading. When you got old janky equipment, you gotta solve some janky problems, haha.