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Question

I have been using Photoshop Illustrator and InDesign for well over 25 years, and no worries. Today I open a file I made months in Illustrator, and all my workspaces have completely DISAPPEARED. Where are they, and how do I get them back??

Forum|Forum|1 day ago
July 7, 2026
4 replies
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There was a problem with our network over the last couple of days and when we got back up running, all of my creative suite workspaces have completely disappeared. Is there any way to get them back? In particular, Illustrator - I have a rather specific setup I use for certain tasks, made specifically for my multiple monitor set up, and I really don’t want to waste precious time redoing my workspace just because there’s a glitch in the network.

jane-e

Community Expert

@kitschpainter wrote:

I went to user\appdata\roaming\adobe and found only one folder: “common”. inside common is LUTs, and then Input and Output. both of which are empty.

Are you looking in Photoshop or Illustrator? If you are using Illustrator, try their forum. I put the link in this post:

https://community.adobe.com/questions-712/i-have-been-using-photoshop-illustrator-and-indesign-for-well-over-25-years-and-no-worries-today-i-open-a-file-i-made-months-in-illustrator-and-all-my-workspaces-have-completely-disappeared-where-are-they-and-how-do-i-get-them-back-1631065?postid=7701053#post7701053

Jane

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

Jane, (s)he mentioned problems with their network in the first post. I wonder if that is what is causing the confusion. I have no experience using Photoshop on a network, but I feel sure the program files and settings would be on a local drive. I am also wondering about there only being a ‘Common’ folder.

I am also wondering if Hidden Items is enabled in the File Explorer View > Show sub-menu. It is turned off by default, and unless you know to turn it on, you are not going to see most of the User > Adobe app settings and presets.

I am also wondering about this statement @kitschpainter made in a later post

You shouldn’t get an option of where to save the Workspace .psp files. They get saved to the appdata\Adobe\Photoshop 2026\Settings\Workspaces folder location. It’s entirely arbitrary. As I said earlier, I really don’t think any settings and presets would be saved to a network server.

I do love Google’s new(is) Ai summarizer :-)

That 2nd from last paragraph about not saving directly the network sounds like good advise. I’ll be remembering that. The bottom line here is that I am not sure what impact network issues would have on workspaces. I think there might be some user confusion going on here.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

Workspaces are auto-saved under the Windows path:

Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop [version]\Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings\WorkSpace.

If you maintain an up-to-date backup of your system, when any settings are lost, just copy them back out of that path location from any backup made from before the problem happened. For example, my system automatically backs up every hour, so if I come back from lunch and discover that my workspaces disappeared, I would restore the settings from the last backup before lunch, and then things are fine again. Or if they were lost yesterday, I would restore the workspace settings from the backup made the day before yesterday.

You might bookmark this Adobe help page to find where Photoshop stores not just workspace settings, but all kinds, such as actions, brushes, presets…:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/preference-file-names-locations-photoshop.html

The workspace path above was copied from that web page.

…Using illustrator 2026, which i believe just recently forced me to upgrade to

When Creative Cloud applications update, make sure you don’t just click OK on any dialog boxes that go by during the process. If manually updating, there can be a message asking you if you want to keep the previous version’s settings; be sure you set it to keep your settings.

If the Creative Cloud desktop app is set to auto-update, then make sure it’s set to “Import Previous Settings and Preferences” when updating. Personally, I set Auto-Update to Off so that nothing updates without me knowing it (no “forced updates”). I start any updates manually, so that I update only when I’m ready and willing to.

K

kitschpainterAuthor

Participant

YES i save my workspaces in the program - it’s creative cloud, since Creative Suite no longer functionally exists. Using illustrator 2026, which i believe just recently forced me to upgrade to, which coincidentally just crashed when I tried to export the same files i mentioned working on in my first post.

I did create a new workspace, and saved it to Window\Workspace. At this time It is still there.

I went to user\appdata\roaming\adobe and found only one folder: “common”.

inside common is LUTs, and then Input and Output. both of which are empty.

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

Are you using a Windows or Mac system? Conrad gave you the file path for Windows. Custom Workspaces are saved in two folders in the Photoshop Settings folder, in Windows. They should also appear at the top of the Windows\Workspaces folder.

Your custom workspaces are saved in the Workspaces folder

Thew other folder is named Workspaces (modified) and that keeps a record of changes you make to the default workspaces. I assume this means the position of the panels when Photoshop was last closed.

You can copy these folders, and IMO it is a good idea to do exactly that. You can share the same custom workspaces between different versions like Beta and current release. I do this routinely. You can also store the custom workspace folder remotely and link to it with a shortcut in the Photoshop folder. This works if you are running two versions of Photoshop (you put the same shortcut in both version’s workspaces folder) but you’d need to remember to update the remote copy if you resave the custom workspace. I used to do this with workspaces, but I frequently update my workspaces, and it is just as quick to copy the .psp file from beta to release, or whatever, as to update the remote file. I still do this with brushes and other presets.

jane-e

Community Expert

@kitschpainter wrote: I really don’t want to waste precious time redoing my workspace just because there’s a glitch in the network.

You didn’t tell us if you saved your workspaces, or your versions of Creative Suite and OS. If you saved them, look in the Settings folder. If not, here are the steps to back them up for future use.

This is how to backup your workspaces in Creative Cloud. I’m not sure if it’s the same in Creative Suite, which was released about 14 years ago.

SAVE WORKSPACE:

Window > Workspace > New Workspace > name and save the workspace. It will be a .psw file in the settings folder.

Windows: C:\Users[YourName]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop [Version]\Adobe Photoshop [Version] Settings\WorkSpaces
Mac: Macintosh HD/Users/[YourName]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop [Version] Settings/WorkSpaces

BACKUP

Copy your .psw files to a USB flash drive, external drive, or cloud storage to create a backup.

RESTORE

To restore your workspace after an update: Copy your saved .psw file and paste it into the WorkSpaces folder inside the Photoshop Settings

RELAUNCH

Relaunch Photoshop.

Jane

jane-e

Community Expert

@kitschpainter wrote: Today I open a file I made months in Illustrator

I just noticed that you said “Illustrator”. This is the Photoshop forum. The directions may be similar, but possibly with a different extension. If you need help, check with the Illustrator forum:

https://community.adobe.com/p/illustrator

Jane

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