I cannot find my adobe animate project

[Pablo35115076c694]

Hello, so I have been working on this adobe animate 2024 project for a good amount of time, but now suddenly the file that I was working on is competely gone. Early in the making of this project Adobe crashed, but I got a recovered file and was working on that instead, but now this specific file is gone, I tried to open it via "Open Recent" but it says that it doesn't exist and it removed it from the list. I always made sure to save my file, and I never deleted it so I am extremely confused on what is happening, please help.

[Nicktendo28]

Was it in your cloud or on your computer? Usually, if adobe animates crashes it has a recovery file. Search for it and see if your computer finds it. 

[Pablo35115076c694]

It was on my computer, but I am searching absolutely everywhere and I just can't find it.

[kglad]

for win users,

open C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Adobe\<animate version>\en_US\Configuration\AutoRecoverFilenames.txt

and see if there was a saved file and, if so, check the folder location listed,

for mac users, check the folder (for a file with name recover_) where the fla was saved. if the fla wasn't saved, i think you're out of luck, but you can still search your computer for "recover_"

[Pablo35115076c694]

Thank you for the help, I did this and I do not see a file name, does this mean that the file just isn't any longer on my computer or is there somewhere else that I can check?

[kglad]

that's a check for a recovery file. 

if you followed those steps, there's no recovery file.  whether you've saved on your computer, i don't know.

in the future, get in the habit of saving projects frequently with increasing version number appended to your file name so you never again experience a significant loss of work.

[rayek.elfin]

If I got a penny for each such thread on these forums, in the past 10 years I'd be independently wealthy 😉

@Pablo35115076c694Sorry to hear about your project file troubles. Yet you are not the first, nor the last to lose work this way. Never. NEVER work with one original project file only. It is a recipe for disaster.

Always. ALWAYS save version after version, and backup your work. It doesn't matter which software: files go corrupt or stuff happens. That is why it is so important to save versions and create regular backups.

My_project_01, My_Project_02, My_Project_03... And so forth. Disk space is cheap. Your time is not.

Learn from this and from now on save a new version every day. Or every milestone that is hit. And at the end of the work day create a backup of your files to an external drive or somewhere on the cloud.

One last ditch effort could be to use an undelete utility to check if your file is still present on the drive. Very slim chance, but still worth the try.

Kickass Undelete is free and open source. If you are on WIndows (you don't mention your OS), it might be able to retrieve your file. But again: probably not.