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Participant
January 14, 2024
Question

My Photoshop file is gone

  • January 14, 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 596 views

My computer crashed/powered down mysteriously while I was using photoshop. I had 2 photoshop files open when it happened. (We will call them page6 and page7 since that's basically what they are). I get a notice from my PC that I need to plug it in and charge it (I'm on a laptop), only to instantly shut down anyway instead of taking about 10 minutes to do so as it usually does (and even then it has a failsafe where it has 5 minutes or so of power left). I plug in the charger and turn it back on, and when I re-open photoshop it has recovered page6, but page7 (the one i was working on at the time) is nowhere to be found. Not in the folder it was initially in, not in the crash files, recycle bin, nowhere. It doesn't show up on the photoshop Open>Recents tab. I have no proof that it ever even existed all of a sudden. Can anyone help, or at least give steps to make sure this never happens again?

 

Context:

-Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming
-Only programs open at the time were Chrome and Photoshop, so nothing strenuous

-Closest thing i can find to a trace is a tmp file with a date and time signature of right around when the crash would have been. When I open it up in notepad I can't see any text in there, it just looks like lots of empty space, yet the file is 58,359 kb. When I click and drag to select anything it's just empty spaces? I have tried but can't open it in photoshop. 

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    3 replies

    Chris 486
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    January 14, 2024

    Here is also a link to where you try to do further trouble shooting.

    Troubleshoot file recovery in Photoshop (adobe.com)

    D Fosse
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    January 14, 2024

    It's necessary to explain how autorecovery works, because there are so many misunderstandings about this.

     

    Autorecovery works by keeping working copies of open files in the autorecovery folder. For this to initiate, the file has to be saved to disk at least once. In an orderly normal shutdown sequence, the folder is emptied and flushed out.

     

    When Photoshop starts up, it first looks inside this folder. Under normal circumstances, there won't be anything there because it has already been emptied. So Photoshop opens to an empty workspace. Only if Photoshop shut down unexpectedly, so that it didn't have time to empty the folder, will there be anything there. Any content will then open automatically on next launch.

     

    The point is that it has no purpose to look for folders to check what's in them. They will be empty, there won't be anything there.

     

    In this case, autorecovery obviously works. But maybe Photoshop had time to delete one file, but not the other. Or maybe you hadn't saved it properly in the first place.

     

    I'm not going to comment on the wisdom of working with an almost depleted battery. Or maybe I just did.

    kglad
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    January 14, 2024

    in the future, to find the best place to post your message, use the list here, https://community.adobe.com/

    p.s. i don't think the adobe website, and forums in particular, are easy to navigate, so don't spend a lot of time searching that forum list. do your best and we'll move the post (like this one has already been moved) if it helps you get responses.



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