File Doesn't Exist - It Will Be Removed From Your LIsts

[aralessbmn]

Hey,

I have the latest version of Adobe Animate and have slowly been working on a rough sketch for an animated music video for the past few months.  Tonight I opened up Animate and didn't see it in my recent files, so I tried File-Open Recent instead. It was there, so I clicked on it. An error message popped up that said "File doesn't exist - it will be removed from your lists" and now I can't find it anywhere. It doesn't appear in any drive or in the trash folder. Curiously, I can't find any recover files for it - usually if the program crashes it creates a recover file of it. 

I'm the only one that uses my computer, and I definitely didn't delete all trace of this file. Does anyone have any insight into what's going on? Is there any way I can get my file back?

Thank you for your help!

[kglad]

google file recovery software.

and never do this again.  periodically save your fla's with increasing version number appended to the name.

[MYLES238870933ei8]

I HAVE THE SAME ISSUE !!!!
The file recovery software ' Recoverit' for Mac OS, did a free scan but did NOT detect lost file. 

Any other suggestions?

[kglad]

same as above, prevent the problem in the future and try different software.

[bili01]

Hello,

Did you ever receive a solution that works for this issue because I am having the exact same issue.

Many thanks,

Bili

[_keyframer]

Was this after you saved to a local drive? Or were you working from a shared drive such as Dropbox?

[bili01]

Hi,

Thank you for your swift response!

It is saved to a local drive.

I have resolved the issue now.

I wanted to ask, how do I prevent files from corrupting and do you know why animate files even corrupt in the first place.

Kindest regards,

Bili

[_keyframer]

How was your issue resolved?
As for avoiding corruption, best practice is to do a Save as... with an incremental numerically named file...
"MyFile_01.fla"
"MyFile_02.fla"
"MyFile_03.fla"
Etc
I save new versions every couple of hours. Also, if something happens such as an application crash, Animate will save a "RECOVERY" file - almost to a fault. Often without crashing I find my working folder is filled with RECOVERY files making file management a nightmare.

[kglad]

@_keyframer, you also need to close and reopen a fla to confirm it's not corrupted.

@bili01, the most common (in my experience) reason for a fla to get corrupted is for something to cause animate to go unresponsive or for animate/your computer to crash while that fla is open.  but those are not the only thing that corrupt fla files.  eg, i've saved a fla version, closed it and when re-opening found it was corrupted.  i do not know when or how it was corrupted, but that why you (and @_keyframer) should:

save your fla's with increasing version number (eg, for project1, save as project1_v000.fla, project2_v001.fla etc).  then you must close and reopen the latest fla (animate can, but need not be restarted) to confirm it's not corrupt.  only then can you safely delete previous versions.

[_keyframer]

@kglad indeed - when Animate crashes I always select to relaunch and reopen files to ensure they have a good chance of not bing corrupted.

[kglad]

i'm recommending something more.  even without any apparent problems, periodically close and reopen your latest version to confirm you're not saving corrupted versions. ie, i've found version xxx is corrupted and every version back n versions are all corrupted.  i have no explanation.

[bili01]

Hello,

I downloaded Recoverit and enabled the application to make changes to my laptop.

When I did that, I found my file again. I am still confused as to how it even worked because I did not scan my laptop yet with the application, I just enabled the function to work.

Thanks so much for the tip I appreciate it!