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Participant
May 29, 2013
Question

Recovery of unsaved files CS6?

  • May 29, 2013
  • 4 replies
  • 139561 views

How do you manually recover an InDesign CS6 file after a crash (Mac OSx10.8.3)?

I had to restart my macbook this morning as InDesign was running slow.

When it restarted, the file (which I thought I had been diligently saving all of yesterday), opened the version I started with at 4pm, not the version I 'finished' with at 3am this morning (aaargh!!). So, many hours work has just disappeared.

The Adobe document recovery instructions suggest InDesign should automatically recover the file, but this didn't happen.

I can't find the recovery folder in the location Adobe says it should be either, so I can't find the temporary files.

Any suggestions received very gratefully.

This topic has been closed for replies.

4 replies

Known Participant
September 12, 2013

Today I had such a crash. So frustrating. Tried following this guide (http://smallbusiness.chron.com/recover-work-illustrator-39270.html) but no luck. It did recover a file and it was three times bigger in size (>30 MB vs. 11,8 MB) so I had big hopes but the content of the file was the same.

WHEN IS ILLUSTRATOR GOING TO HAVE FILE RECOVERY?

BobLevine
Community Expert
Community Expert
September 12, 2013

This is the InDesign forum but the best way to protect your work is to save often and have backups. Here's an article I wrote a while back: http://boblevine.us/why-i-always-save-files-in-dropbox-and-why-you-should-too/

Known Participant
June 10, 2015

BobLevine‌ you're right! Didn't realise the question was about InDesign, not Illustrator. Better to realise that 2 years late than never, ha!

Protecting your work saving often and backing up is good advice – still, Adobe still should do a better job with crash recovery as the maker of the software.

Inspiring
May 29, 2013

At what point did InDesign crash? You say InDesign was running slow, and that you had to restart. (Though I question whether rebooting OS X is necessary to fix sluggishness in one application.)

Did it crash when you tried to quit it?

And ID opened a recovered document when you launched it? But what about the actual document that you had been saving? There may be a dinstiction between the two. Perhaps that is still intact?

And surely you have a Time Machine backup that would include a newer version of the file?

Peter Spier
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 29, 2013

Unfortunately, finding the recovery folder probably won't do you much good. There is no method I know of to make ID open the recovery files other than a crash/force quit. You could verify that there is some data there, then open ID and if the recovery doesn't happen automatically (and it sounds like it did, but not to the point you were hoping), force quit ID and reopen and see if you have better luck. My suspicion, though, is you are just stuck with what you have.

Salah Fadlabi
Inspiring
May 29, 2013

The recovery folder appears in different places on different operating systems, so the best way to find it is to use your operating system’s Search utility to find a folder called (InDesign Recovery)

Participant
May 29, 2013

Hi Salah, I did already try that but search returned no results. Do you know how to set the destination folder for recovery files within InDesign?

Salah Fadlabi
Inspiring
May 29, 2013

http://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/indesign-document-recovery.html

* Mac OS X: Users/[User Name]/ Library/Cache/Adobe InDesign/Version[#.0]/ InDesign Recovery