Cookbook file corrupted

[Desie]

I was 600 plus pages into my cookbook, saving frequently as I was building.  My wife inadvertently disconnected my MacBook from my external drive. When I gotthe whole thing back up and running  - I went to open the file but the message says file corrupted. 
 

There was panic, but I had exported a PDF version to the desktop some 500 pages in. I’ve tried to import that PDF in to Affinity a couple of times. The long and the short is; it looks like my book, but the graphics don’t look as good, nor are the text blocks the same.  I was in an 8.5 X 11 two page format and my pages were two column pages. The imported version doesn’t have two column pages, they are more like independent blocks of text. 
 

is there a way to recoup what I lost from that PDF or must I start all over again, I’m so sad about this.

[MikeTO]

When you open a PDF, Affinity builds editable pages out of a format that was never intended to be editable. You will have lost all of your text styles, frame links, and much more, and as you've discovered, multi-column frames will be separate frames. But opening a PDF is a great way to rescue lost work.

There's one more thing you could try with your afpub file before you begin the process of reconstructing it from the PDF. Create a new document with pages of the same size and then try Document > Add Pages from File. Sometimes you can import all or most pages from a damaged file into a new document.

Good luck

[Desie]

Thanks Mike, I tried that - it didn’t work.  It’s not a complete loss.  I always have the ability to cut and paste from the PDF. Tedious yes, but beets typing it all over again.