How to open autosave files?

[OSunBoy]

Not infrequently, my Affinity Designer crashes on its own, even during light tasks. Sometimes, I’m just working on something I usually do, and suddenly, it closes. The problem is that lately, it hasn’t been giving me the option to recover my work, even when there are autosaved files for that work in the autosaves folder (I checked myself).

For example, just now, Affinity suddenly crashed in the middle of a project. I had worked on it for only a few minutes, but I still made some progress, and I don’t want to lose it. I checked the autosaves folder, and the backup file for this project was there, but I can’t open it.

Does anyone know how to manually open these autosave files?

[markw]

Just change the auto-saved file’s extension to that of the Affinity app you wish it to be opened by. (You may or may not wish to make a duplicate of the auto-saved file first)
For example; for it to open by default in APhoto, change the extension to: .afphoto
And then open it normally.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, markw said:

Just change the auto-saved file’s extension to that of the Affinity app you wish it to be opened by.

Have you really had much success with doing that? Typically, autosave files are just a fraction of the size of the original version, lacking most of its data & structure. containing only the 'delta' data added since the last save. It may work if there is an available saved copy that is not corrupted but in my experience usually not.

[markw]

@R C-R To be honest it's not something I ever need to do often and yes sometimes there isn't as much content as you would think there should be.
But generally the content recovered has so far been usable for me.

When I have used it, it is mostly when I've closed an image I've been working on in Photo or indeed Quit the app and have forgotten to save the edits I've made and Photo has failed to warn me of unsaved changes!
This doesn't happen very often, and I've never been able to replicate the conditions on demand that will allow Photo to close without issuing the Save warning. But sometimes it just remains silent!
I've not made an official bug report yet because it only happens infrequently and I can't deliberately replicate it!

[R C-R]

Just now, markw said:

When I have used it, it is mostly when I've closed an image I've been working on in Photo or indeed Quit the app and have forgotten to save the edits I've made and Photo has failed to warn me of unsaved changes!

FWIW, I have never had that happen. Only if the app crashes do I not get the warning. i assume this is somehow related to your favorable results with the rename workaround but I have no idea how or why it should.

[walt.farrell]

21 hours ago, OSunBoy said:

For example, just now, Affinity suddenly crashed in the middle of a project. I had worked on it for only a few minutes, but I still made some progress, and I don’t want to lose it. I checked the autosaves folder, and the backup file for this project was there, but I can’t open it.

Does anyone know how to manually open these autosave files?

You should be prompted to open it by the program, and normally should not need to open it yourself.

However, there are two modes of operation for the autosave files:

1. If the file was new, and never Saved by you, you should be prompted when you start the application.
2. If the file was not a new one, and had been previously Saved, you won't be prompted until you try to Open that file again.