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I have been using the trial.  I was under the impression that once the trial expired that i would get a code when I purchased that would unlock the program. I did not think it would be a completely different program.  I have numerous designs that would have been restored when the trial opened back up.  Instead the trial is now over, and though I spent my hard earned cash on the program, I cannot recover those files that i put tons of time into which is far more important than money. These are logos and designs that I made for the business I work for as the project manager so I was paid for this time and my managers, the owners of the company, are not going to be happy to say the least.  I need these files recovered.  There was no warning that this would happen.  It didn't even warn me the trial was almost over or anything.  You guys gotta do better than that. I don't want to hear "Were sorry but there is no way to recover these files" because I know that they are somewhere on my hard drive.  Whether you need to extend the trial so I can open it one more time or whatever. It needs to happen. Please and thank you.

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Hi Edge,

Welcome to the forums.

 

Removing the trial from your system after purchasing the full version won't delete the files you've created, they will still be saved on your HDD. It's just a case of knowing where you selected to save them when you used File > Save in the app. Have you tried doing a search for .afdesign or .afphoto files depending on which app you tried. 

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That is the same response I got in email from your guys team!  Do you think I'm an idiot or something or did you just not even read what I posted.  I guess I have to type the exact same thing again... I DID NOT SAVE THE FILES BECAUSE THEY AUTOMATICALLY SAVE AND RESTORE.  I did not know the trial was over because it did not warn me.  It did not warn me that unsaved files would be lost when the trial ended.  I know they are still there because nothing has changed except that I can't open the trial due to its expiration.  I understand that you can't give out how to reset the trial but I need these designs.  I could lose my job for this.  I will send you a USB with the entire program on it if I have to.  I really like this program and I have bought the full version but the customer support so far has been poor at best.  Both of the people I talked to treated me like a child like I don't know how to save a file and how to find it.  I have a bachelors in computer science so please be real with me now.  Help me recover these files.

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If you are lucky then they might have been saved in some Affinity product related "autosave" folder. For example under Win something like the default hidden "%AppData%\Affinity\...\autosave\*.autosave" folder.

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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When you have used the app and then decide to close it, if you haven't used File > Save. The app will ask you if you want to Save or Don't Save, when you click Save you then get prompted for a filename and location for the app to save the file to. Have you also preformed a system search as I previously suggested for .afdesign/afphoto files as this will be the format the files are saved in.

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I DID NOT SAVE THE FILES BECAUSE THEY AUTOMATICALLY SAVE AND RESTORE.

Automatic save is not a feature of either Affinity app. Both apps have a File Recovery interval setting in preferences, but that is not the same thing as a traditional autosave feature -- it just sets the interval for saving temporary data for any currently open documents, which it will offer to use if the app crashes to try to restore the documents to their pre-crash state the next time you open the app.

 

But if you close a document normally, as Lee D says it will ask you if you want to save any changes you have made to an existing, previously saved file or if you want to save new work that has never been saved before. At that time, the temp version will be deleted -- otherwise there would be a constantly growing number of files cluttering up the hard drive in a location not normally accessible even if users choose the "Don't Save" option when closing a file normally.

 

So basically, if you click "Don't Save," the work will not be saved unless you have some other utility or OS feature that will do this independently of the app, like a versioning control feature.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I know how computers work. I knew those files were somewhere on my computer because I restored them each time I turned on my computer. I didn't save all of them manually because they were works in progress.  Its ridiculous how you all keep saying they are gone.  I found them in the "autosave" folder as the nice gentlemen above suggested and restored them like I knew I could. All I did was copy the autosave folder from the trial version to the full version.  Next time someone has this issue which they undoubtedly will since you guys mislabeled a feature and don't warn that the full version will be a separate download  (Most times you have a trial you get a code to unlock the full version out of the program that you already running.) , point them in the direction of this post.  I have read multiple other posts of people with the same problem so maybe instead of just saying "Sorry those files are lost" just tell people the truth, eh?  Thanks you and PEACE.

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If "restoring" them worked as you have described, it means they were saved in the normal way somewhere else. Check it out for yourself: the files in the autosave folder are far too small to contain all the data of the saved versions.

 

And if these files were not deleted, it means you were not quitting the app in the normal way.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Right, they are only the minimal amount of data needed needed so that Affinity can rebuild the design and I knew that. I knew that no other program could rebuild those designs from those files  That's why copying the autosave folder to the full version of Affinity tricked the program into rebuilding them.  I described exactly what I have been doing in all my posts and emails so that I could recover my designs for the company I work for.  If it's not really an autosave then it should not be called autosave.  How is mistaking that anyone's fault but Affinity's for being incorrectly labeled.  However, I knew that it could be done and was unsure how to do it so i asked. I was just very bitter about the way your guys team handled my queries.  All good though. I got all those files.  I just hope this comes in useful for someone else someday. 

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Also for future readers:

 

I agree with Edge that the industry practice of labelling crash recovery files as autosave is misleading, although sadly common in a variety of software. I suspect it represents programmer thinking, not user thinking.

 

As somebody who has worked systems support and has written software, please DO ALWAYS MANUALLY SAVE works in progress, even if the software has an "autosave" feature.

It's the difference between leaving incomplete work on the floor and hoping the cleaner (the operating system, or sometimes the software itself) does not think they are junk temporary files (relying on autosave and autorecovery) and putting your partly completed work in a drawer so you can continue working on it tomorrow (manually saving and re-opening named files).

 

Personally, I teach people to manually save multiple versions of their files at either regular intervals (file001, file002, file003) or at various stages of work (e.g. for artwork it might be after pencilling, inking, colouring, composition, shading).

This is the result of various bitter experiences with important files being lost or rendered useless by save corruption and other factors (e.g. 3 days work lost when the only version of a file got corrupted in a power outage), late design changes, etc.

 

Professionals who work in large teams might have experienced this through a version control system, but it is also worth doing on an individual level for one-man projects.

 

Disk space and a few seconds of time is worth a lot less than your sanity and reputation.

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As somebody who has worked systems support and has written software, please DO ALWAYS MANUALLY SAVE works in progress, even if the software has an "autosave" feature.

It is also extremely important to backup your work regularly to at least one other drive, & ideally to an off-site storage location as well. Drives can & do fail suddenly without any warning; file systems can become corrupt for a number of reasons, overwriting files & making them unrecoverable.

 

Someone I knew back when Apple first switched from SCSI to ATA drives put it like this: "You do not own any data until it is stored in at least two independent locations." He should know -- he was a programmer who wrote low level hardware drivers for Apple & other companies.

 

Personally, I maintain three local backups, two normally online & one normally offline & not connected to anything. I also used to burn the most important stuff to write-once CD & DVD media & store them off-site. Now that high capacity USB 3 thumb drives are cheap & readily available, I use them for this instead.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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@obtusity

 

We intentionally renamed "autosave" to "File Recovery Interval" in the Preference panel quite some time ago, so that people didn't get confused by the terminology.

As has been stated, we do not offer autosave - only recovery files which are for the purpose of restoring files after a failure (be it a crash or a hardware restart).

 

@Edge

 

I am not sure how you have managed to work for so long without actually saving anything?  If you close a document, or close the app, you are asked whether you want to save your document.  The app or document will not close until you answer that question.

If you are forcing apps to quit with unsaved data - that is another thing. Our recovery feature only works at intervals, so such behaviour is not guaranteed to save the last state of your document before a forced quit.

 

It is also our advice that you back up important work.  Whether you use other local storage or cloud storage, it is unwise to rely on having only one copy of important data.  Modern drives are more prone to immediate failure compared to older spinning discs which could accommodate bad sectors before a total failure.

We have ways of salvaging broken files in very specific circumstances, but we cannot be responsible for failure of storage.

 

Just to be clear - the automatic saving of documents you are describing is not a common feature.  It is used by Apple products mainly, and those built on the Cocoa document model which is Apple specific, and integrates with iCloud in particular.  We have our own document model (for many reasons, including being properly cross platform).

 

I am sure we have never made any claims that our application works in the way you are describing.  I wrote the serialisation parts of Affinity, and I've never described our saving mechanism in that way.

SerifLabs team - Affinity Developer
  • Software engineer  -  Photographer  -  Guitarist  -  Philosopher
  • iMac 27" Retina 5K (Late 2015), 4.0GHz i7, AMD Radeon R9 M395
  • MacBook (Early 2015), 1.3GHz Core M, Intel HD 5300
  • iPad Pro 10.5", 256GB
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We intentionally renamed "autosave" to "File Recovery Interval" in the Preference panel quite some time ago, so that people didn't get confused by the terminology.

 

Unfortunately, the only reference I can find to this feature in AP help is in the Preferences topic, which just says, "File recovery interval—choose the behavior of the application's autosave."

 

That needs to be updated & expanded into something more informative.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Good spot - I'l let the documentation team know.

SerifLabs team - Affinity Developer
  • Software engineer  -  Photographer  -  Guitarist  -  Philosopher
  • iMac 27" Retina 5K (Late 2015), 4.0GHz i7, AMD Radeon R9 M395
  • MacBook (Early 2015), 1.3GHz Core M, Intel HD 5300
  • iPad Pro 10.5", 256GB
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The documentation team should change this also.

 

 

"Affinity Designer autosaves your document at regular intervals. To change the autosave interval, go to Edit>Preferences (Performance)."

 

 

Just in case it confuses anyone else with  "...a bachelors in computer science"

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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@Carl123

 

What is the name of the help topic with that info in it? I can't find anything in either AP or AD about this feature other than what I quoted above from the Preferences topic in the Workspace > More subsection.

 

@Ben

 

I also am wondering how Edge (or anybody else) could work for long without doing proper saves at least once per Affinity document. If nothing else, this would mean Affinity documents had no user assigned filenames, would never appear in the "Open Recent" File menu list, & so on, would it not?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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@R C-R

Just searched for "autosave" in Help screen, 2 topics are presented, 2nd one has that text (Both in AP and AD, Windows version)

 

Last line in attached screenshot

 

 

post-17958-0-61923100-1490958730_thumb.jpg

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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@Carl123

 

Thanks for that. The same thing appears in the Mac version's "Save" help topic -- I just overlooked it when I was running through the search results.  :wacko:

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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@Ben

 

I also am wondering how Edge (or anybody else) could work for long without doing proper saves at least once per Affinity document. If nothing else, this would mean Affinity documents had no user assigned filenames, would never appear in the "Open Recent" File menu list, & so on, would it not?

 

Yes, that is correct.  The title bar will say "<Untitled> [Modified]".

 

I am somewhat perplexed at what Edge is describing.  It should not be possible if everything is done normally.

 

You cannot shut down the application without it asking you what you want to do with unsaved documents.  You can also not shut down or restart the system without agreeing to either save unsaved documents or lose your changes.  If you chose the option of "Cancel" then Affinity should be preventing the system from shutting down or restarting. (I've just tested this on Mac, and I'm told the same is true for Windows).

 

Sleeping the system is no issue as the app doesn't get closed.

 

So, the only way to achieve what Edge is describing is to force the application to quit, without going through all the safe shut down.

 

As has been pointed out, the "Reopen on document on startup" only works with documents that have been saved somewhere, and were open when Affinity is shut down correctly.

 

@Edge

 

Can you please describe exactly how you have got into this situation.  I was certain we'd covered every angle of closing documents, application and system.  If it is true that you are cleanly shutting down your system - or are you really talking about using the hibernate feature, which is not the same thing at all - it relies on storing system memory to your drive before powering down and attempts to put everything back when you wake up.  We have no control over that as it is a system level thing.  It will also not go through the clean shut down procedure which ensures that files are saved - the app is effectively not closed down.

SerifLabs team - Affinity Developer
  • Software engineer  -  Photographer  -  Guitarist  -  Philosopher
  • iMac 27" Retina 5K (Late 2015), 4.0GHz i7, AMD Radeon R9 M395
  • MacBook (Early 2015), 1.3GHz Core M, Intel HD 5300
  • iPad Pro 10.5", 256GB
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 You can also not shut down or restart the system without agreeing to either save unsaved documents or lose your changes. 

I've just had a play with AP under Win 10 pro - Windows will shut down without prompting. even though there are unsaved changes.  If I try to shutdown with an unsaved Libre Office file I'm warned that I risk losing my work!

AP, AD & APub user, running Win10

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Ok - I need to get the Windows team to double check that.  The testing we did earlier seemed to work as expected.

SerifLabs team - Affinity Developer
  • Software engineer  -  Photographer  -  Guitarist  -  Philosopher
  • iMac 27" Retina 5K (Late 2015), 4.0GHz i7, AMD Radeon R9 M395
  • MacBook (Early 2015), 1.3GHz Core M, Intel HD 5300
  • iPad Pro 10.5", 256GB
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On this Windows 10 system, the only time I've had the Affinity apps shutting down without prompting when there are unsaved changes is if I've used 'File > New From Clipboard' and I haven't done any editing of the new document.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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@Edge

 

I am not sure how you have managed to work for so long without actually saving anything?  If you close a document, or close the app, you are asked whether you want to save your document.  The app or document will not close until you answer that question.

If you are forcing apps to quit with unsaved data - that is another thing. Our recovery feature only works at intervals, so such behaviour is not guaranteed to save the last state of your document before a forced quit.

 

Haha I swear you guys are hilarious it seems like just aren't reading my posts very thoroughly. This is the last time I'm going to say it.  I saved many of the designs I was working on.  However, there were some that were a work in progress. I rarely turn my laptop off because I'm constantly using it. Since its a solid state, even when it dies, it keeps track of my programs that are running and what not.  I had been working some designs that day and the day before and I restarted my computer because it was getting slow.  I purposely did not save them because it had restored them every other time and it would have again if the trial didn't run out.  I knew the trial was almost over but I was under the impression that when I purchased the full version it would be a code to unlock the trial since it was already the full program with a timer.  I knew that they weren't actually saved I know what saving is goddammit! hahaha The only part that made me bitter off is that you guys could have told me about the autosave folder from the very beginning instead all 3 people said I could only recover them if they were manually saved and the trial was over. Period.  It wasn't until some random person on this thread took the time to tell me about the AUTOSAVE folder.

 

 I know how saving works so stop telling me that I am misusing the program.  I can use the program however I want and guess what?! I have all my designs safe and sound like I knew I would with the right help. I'm still not saving them and I haven't lost one after using it for 2 weeks   Also, This isn't the first time this has happened to someone I found two other posts from others.  Both times your team told people it was impossible to recover them and that they were sorry for their losses. You could have helped these people save their designs instead of telling them they were screwed  If something keeps happening like that then as a customer service team you are supposed to fix the problem not just tell people that they don't what they are talking about and they are screwed. Changing the preference settings label doesn't change the fact that the files are stored in a folder called autosave and two different autosave topics come up in the help menu. Why not just change it to a real autosave feature? you ever think of that? Or warn people that when the trial ends unsaved designs will be lost?  oh wait that's not true because they are automatically saved in the AUTOSAVE folder...  :D

 

 

The documentation team should change this also.

 

 

"Affinity Designer autosaves your document at regular intervals. To change the autosave interval, go to Edit>Preferences (Performance)."

 

 

Just in case it confuses anyone else with  "...a bachelors in computer science"

 

Brother, how you going to say I'm confused when I was right the whole time. I knew the files were on my computer some where I just did not know exactly where.  I FOUND AND RECOVERED MY FILES WHILE AFFINITY TOLD ME IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE. If anyone is confused its Affinity's customer service team/moderators and you for being their little lap dog. 

 

Seriously guys, I'm the best so just stahp.  PEACE.

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