Crashed - Please Help

[Dogfanz01]

I'm new to Affinity so please bear with me.  I have been working on a brochure (back page) for my company and just as I was finishing it, the program crashed.  I've been hitting "save" frequently but not "save as" because I didn't need to rename the file so I didn't think I needed to.

 

When I opened the program again, I went to "open recent" but it's not there.  The front page is still there.  I tried opening the files that are listed and they all said "a recovery file exits" but when I open them they aren't the right files.  

 

Can you help me find my files?  I've searched high and low in file explorer but I can't find them.  I'm just sick as I've worked on this for hours.

 

Again, I'm new to Affinity so you may have to dumb it down when replying but I'd be so grateful if someone had an answer.  Thank you, Cindy

[HVDB Photography]

If you're on Windows and you are using Affinity PHOTO, you can  do a search for  *.afphoto 

[toltec]

3 hours ago, Dogfanz01 said:

I'm new to Affinity so please bear with me.  I have been working on a brochure (back page) for my company and just as I was finishing it, the program crashed.  I've been hitting "save" frequently but not "save as" because I didn't need to rename the file so I didn't think I needed to.

 

When I opened the program again, I went to "open recent" but it's not there.  The front page is still there.  I tried opening the files that are listed and they all said "a recovery file exits" but when I open them they aren't the right files.  

 

Can you help me find my files?  I've searched high and low in file explorer but I can't find them.  I'm just sick as I've worked on this for hours.

 

Again, I'm new to Affinity so you may have to dumb it down when replying but I'd be so grateful if someone had an answer.  Thank you, Cindy

 

Affinity Photo or Designer ?

 

Macintosh or PC?

 

Was it a brand new document, or did you open an existing document?

 

If it was a brand new document and you just pressed "Save" without giving it a name, it will be called untitled.afdesign or untitled,afphoto (Windows).

 

If Windows, try doing as HDVB says and do a Windows search for .afphoto or .afdesign (as appropriate). Windows will display a list. I just did one below to show "untitled" by saving a file without naming it.

 

 

The problem is, if you saved more than one document without reading the warning message, it would overwrite the older version, so you might have lost it by overwriting the first one with a newer one.

[Alfred]

20 minutes ago, toltec said:

The problem is, if you saved more than one document without reading the warning message, it would overwrite the older version, so you might have lost it by overwriting the first one with a newer one.

 

The OP said “Can you help me find my files [plural]?” but if she’s only been working one project and she’s been choosing ‘Save’ instead of ‘Save As...’ then there won’t be more than one copy of the project file. If that copy has been corrupted because of a crash (or for some other reason) then in the absence of any backups I don’t see a way to recover the lost work.

[toltec]

19 minutes ago, Alfred said:

 

The OP said “Can you help me find my files [plural]?” but if she’s only been working one project and she’s been choosing ‘Save’ instead of ‘Save As...’ then there won’t be more than one copy of the project file. 

 

My point being (or one of them), if she created page 1, saved it, then created page 2 saved it, page 3 saved it and finally page 4 and saved that, but all with the same name "untitled" (by clicking Save and overwriting the previous "untitled" files) there would actually only be one file, "untitled" but that would be page 4. See ?

 

There would be a warning each time, which would require a conscious and deliberate overwriting action, so I'm not really sure how the situation developed. 

 

However, a search for "untitled" would display some sort of list (as per my image), even if there was only one "untitled" on it. Got to start somewhere 

[Alfred]

47 minutes ago, toltec said:

My point being (or one of them), if she created page 1, saved it, then created page 2 saved it, page 3 saved it and finally page 4 and saved that, but all with the same name "untitled" (by clicking Save and overwriting the previous "untitled" files) there would actually only be one file, "untitled" but that would be page 4. See ?

 

Yes, I do see. I was coming at it from a different angle, assuming that Cindy was working on the back page of her brochure after having successfully saved the front page in the same document (which would mean she was using artboards in AD, since neither app has pages yet and APh doesn’t even have artboards).

[toltec]

9 minutes ago, Alfred said:

 

Yes, I do see. I was coming at it from a different angle, assuming that Cindy was working on the back page of her brochure after having successfully saved the front page in the same document (which would mean she was using artboards in AD, since neither app has pages yet and APh doesn’t even have artboards).

 

I think she has created a document for each physical brochure page. But has lost some of them, hence "files".

 

I could be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time 

[Alfred]

1 minute ago, toltec said:

I could be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time 

 

Been there, done that!  But you’re probably right in this case.

 

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, Dogfanz01 said:

I tried opening the files that are listed and they all said "a recovery file exits" but when I open them they aren't the right files.  

Can you explain a bit more about how you tried to open them & when the 'recovery file exits' message appeared?

 

During startup, the Affinity apps check for recovery files in a special location. When the app quits normally the recovery files are automatically deleted so they won't fill up the drive with unneeded, useless dreck over time. If the app crashes, they are not deleted & on the next startup the app should see them & offer to reopen any of your files with unsaved changes, using the previously saved versions & the corresponding recovery files to restore those files to the same state they were in when the recovery file was last updated before the crash. (These are not normal, stand alone Affinity format files so you can't open them in the normal way.)

 

But you only get one change to do that -- if you do not open them when you see the message, they are deleted, again to prevent filling up the drive.