"Save failed because the file could not be written to" on network drive

[Riva]

I have the same problem as here. It happened to me on at least 3 occasions.

Affinity Designer 2.5.3
Windows 11

Steps

• Opened existing .afdesign doc from mapped network drive
• Made changes to the doc
• (In the meantime, on one occasion, workstation may have gone to sleep and was woken up. I am not sure.)
• Trying to 'Save' I get "Save failed because the file could not be written to."
• I checked that the target mapped drive and folder is accessible fine and other programs can create and save files to it without problem.
• Trying to 'Save as' (into a new file) anywhere failed with slightly different error message about not being able to write to file.
  I tried to save:
  • into the original folder on mapped network drive, but to a new file.
  • anywhere else on the original mapped network drive.
  • on a local (non System) HDD and SSD.
  • on Desktop.
• I then opened new empty doc in Designer and saved it to Desktop. It saved without problem.
• After that I was suddenly again able to 'Save' the original doc, to the previously problematic network drive folder.
  And able to 'Save as' anywhere.

[NathanC]

Welcome to the forums @Riva,

The development team are currently investigating instances of the ‘Failed to save’ errors occurring  under certain scenarios. This can be the result of issues with objects and elements within the document failing to save correctly but it can also be caused by saving to external storage locations such as a network drive. From your description it's more likely to be issue with the file writing back to it's location on the network drive. If you're saving to external storage (E.G Cloud, Network, USB) it's generally best to save locally and move to external storage after, as this can often significantly reduce the chances of encountering these errors or a file corruption.

For the moment the diagnostic information in these 'failed to save' errors are quite limited at the moment so hopefully we'll be able to see more information as well as improved handling overall in the future, but I will be sure to 'bump' the existing issue with your report and info.