I Am So Over This

I agree with that, too. We shouldn't have to do that step at all. If you create an action and it's there the next time you start Photoshop, it was saved. For the action to not be there in the future, Photoshop un-saved it.

Anyway, the action I needed today was one I purchased a couple of years ago, so I know there was an atn file for it.

Yes, absolutely agree with that.

I wrote that blogpost back in 2017 after answering yet another "I have lost all my Actions" post on a forum (whether Adobe or elsewhere). It feels like Groundhog Day at times, but I really think Adobe need to make it clearer that unless you save your Action Sets to .atn file you risk losing them and the Actions within. This goes for when first created or when updated. Does Photoshop really need another nag box popping up to inform or remind users of this fact? Perhaps, but with the option to "not show again".

This falls under the general heading of corrupt preferences.

Preferences are prone to corruption because they are rewritten to your user account on every application exit. Any irregular shutdown can corrupt this process.

This is in contrast to program files that are read-only.

Steven -- you are always so willing to lend a hand. I truly appreciate you. Your answer this time, however, blames the victim. I would have preferred an answer to the question of why this happens so randomly and what is Adobe doing about it. 

I don't think it's fair to say that it is blaming the victim – when it is stating facts... Even if you believe that the truths are unpalatable. I don't think that it is a bug either, but I'm not an engineer.

Did you read my blogpost, perhaps you can recover a previous system backup of the Actions Palette.psp file to recover unsaved Actions that have not been explicitly saved to .atn file.

Steven -- you are always so willing to lend a hand. I truly appreciate you. Your answer this time, however, blames the victim. I would have preferred an answer to the question of why this happens so randomly and what is Adobe doing about it. 

Scott

So it sounds like you have been through this before. I think all of us have.

Just reload the saved .ATN files... You did save the Actions, right?

https://prepression.blogspot.com/2017/01/photoshop-custom-action-file-backup.html

One should manually save out each action set "folder" individually to a .atn file using the menu on the upper right of the action panel window:

Loaded .atn files or newly created and unsaved action sets are temporarily stored in the Actions Palette presets file (Actions Palette.psp). This file should be considered temporary and may be subject to corruption or loss, which is why making an explicit save to .atn file for each individual action set is strongly advised.