ALL .afdesign files have been "converted" to artboards, no editable objects. HELP!!

[Jeithorpe]

I'm devestated.

 

I've been working on a ton of designs for months, several took me a week or more each.

When I go to open any of them, ALL of the individual layers are GONE!  I can't edit anything!!

Skut Logo.afdesign

[Alfred]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @Jeithorpe.

This is nothing to do with artboards, but everything to do with the fact that your background layer is a raster layer. My guess is that you exported to a raster format and then opened the resultant file instead of reopening a file saved in the native Affinity format. If you chose not to save the vector version, then I’m afraid it’s irretrievable.

[Jeithorpe]

Thank you Alfred.  I know it had nothing to do with the artboards, but I found it odd that there are artboards when I don't use artboards.  And thought that it might be helpful in figuring out what went wrong.

I only have my work saved as .afdesign, or .svg.  

[Alfred]

5 minutes ago, Jeithorpe said:

I only have my work saved as .afdesign, or .svg.

Your *.afdesign files should include any vector objects that you created, unless you rasterized everything before saving. SVG files are usually vector, but they can include (or consist of nothing but) encoded raster data.

[Jeithorpe]

Yes, they should.  I'm not even sure how I would have rasterized anything prior to saving.  I don't use the Raster Persona.  
Anyway, thanks.

[Alfred]

7 minutes ago, Jeithorpe said:

I'm not even sure how I would have rasterized anything prior to saving.

There are options for this on the Layer menu, and also via the context menu that pops up in the Layers panel when you right-click on a layer.