Reader Crash and Recovery

[gkennedy1988]

I was useing Adobe Reader XI on my Windows & pro desktop computer after i was done editing my document and ready to print it... it froze wouldnt let me click on anything and then it closed i opened up my document and all my changes were gone... i looke dall over the internet and the support says that when i open the document again it is suppoed to ask me if i want to open my auto saved changes but it didnt and i have lopst everything i need to get it back how do i do that?

[C_F_McBlob]

Recover from an unexpected shutdown (Reader application only, not browser)

The Autosave feature prevents changes from being lost after an unexpected interruption.

1. Open the files you were working on before the unexpected shutdown.
2. When prompted, click Yes to open the files that were automatically saved.
3. Save the files with the same names as the files you were originally working on. 

If automatic saving is disabled, restart it from the Preferences dialog box

1. Right-click a document, and choose Page Display Preferences from the pop-up menu.
2. In the left column, select Documents, and then select Automatically Save Document Changes To Temporary File Every XX Minutes.
3. In the Minutes box, specify how often you want to save files.

[gkennedy1988]

As stated in my question I was not goven a prompt to click yes or no on!

[C_F_McBlob]

If automatic saving is disabled, restart it from the Preferences dialog box

1. Right-click a document, and choose Page Display Preferences from the pop-up menu.
2. In the left column, select Documents, and then select Automatically Save Document Changes To Temporary File Every XX Minutes.
3. In the Minutes box, specify how often you want to save files.

If it wasn't previously selected.... you will not see an option to recover a document that wasn't "auto saved"... because the recovery file doesn't exist.

Enable auto save, and going forward, you won't have this issue. Unfortunately it's too late to do anything about the one you lost.

[gkennedy1988]

Auto save was enabled and set for every 5 mins I have spent over an hour filling out these 5 pages

[C_F_McBlob]

Something went wrong with the auto save then...

The end result is the same, unfortunately. If there is no recovery file, it will not allow you to select one to restore the document. I wish there was a better answer.

[gkennedy1988]

Well crap I miss the good old days when companies actually cared about the products they distributed and the end users who used them... now they just make crap and could care less if all the features work properly or not

[C_F_McBlob]

I'd have to agree with you on that. Being as I'm not an Adobe Employee (I'm just a free lance web designer who volunteers time and skills here) I'm subject to the same experiences you are. System crashes are as bad as they are unpredictable, and I don't think any software company can do much about a "worst case scenario".

Back when I worked for Intuit, we had a Quickbooks customer who was trying to wrap up second quarter ledgers during a thunderstorm, and lightning struck the office, frying (literally) every computer in the building. He was so ticked off that Intuit didn't "automatically keep an online backup of all his files". It took hours to get him to realize that he didn't really want us to have access to all of his business dealings, and the responsibility for backing up his financial records was solely his.

It's not as drastic for PDFs that don't contain sensitive personal or financial data, but even with safeguards in place, an unexpected crash can have unforeseen and unpredictable consequences.

[gkennedy1988]

Well I kinda would think that the auto backup would work like microsoft office word and save ur work every so often so if the program crashes u can get it back... because sometimes I forget to hit save every few minutes which from my understand is how its supposed to work... but unfortunatly it didn't for me... and I had finished filling all 5 pages out and went to click on file and it wouldnt show the menu so I could hit print... and I kept trying till it said reader is not responding with the only button to select as force close... and it was all gone 😞

[C_F_McBlob]

Been there, done that.

Imagine working seven hours on a logo on Photoshop... 121 layers, text, overlays, gradients, shading, drop shadows... I pressed Ctrl+S to save it... the app froze. I went and fixed a snack... nachos... I was gone twenty minutes and it was still locked up. Eventually the WHOLE PC froze and I had no choice but to yank the plug from the wall. I spent another seven hours redoing the logo because the file was "broken" when I rebooted, and it couldn't be recovered.