Why did my project file completely erase all of my project? How can I fix this?

Where on your machine do you store project files? Where do you store the auto-saves?

I'll have to check later today. I haven't checked the back ups. I'm fairly new to this program so I'll look it up. Thanks for the comment. I'll respond back later if I'm still stuck and confused.

This wasn't helpful.

I had no clue there was an auto save until last night. I always save every 5 minutes of work. Everything in my timeline reverted back to the moment I began my project with the exception of all the (60+) of video/audio/stills I've imported over 1.5 weeks, that were still organized like the last time I saved it. A month ago, I opened the project to edit one clip and export it. Everything was fine. I haven't touched it since. 

ALL your work in Premiere is saved as metadata in a big text file ... that's what a prproj project file is, essentially. A big zipped Text file.

So how it's been Saved is rather crucial. And over the years, I have seen several people who'd had a like 20 minute auto-save period set. Worked away for awhile, forgot to manually save. And closed the project.

Then "this annoying popup" jumped in front of them, and in their hurry to get ON with life, they just canceled it.

Opened Pr later, their work wasn't there! 

Well ... the way the app actually works, they'd told it ... (not meaning to, of course!) ... to dump that last bit of work.

Learning to hit Ctrl[Cmd]-S to manually save every so often was my first BIG Learn thing. And a painful thing it was to learn too! I now hit that every couple minutes without even thinking about it. As in ... anytime I pause for any reason, the brain just tells the fingers to hit Ctrl-S.

Practical things like that make life so much easier. As there are so many freaking traps to fall into in all these video apps.

Neil

When does it say your project was saved?

Have you checked backups of your project?