Can I Recover an Illustrator File That Was Never Saved?

[Raspbunnie]

Last night I opened a blank canvas in Illustrator without saving it. I then worked on a project for a few hours, still having forgotten to save it. Adobe eventually crashed and I had to restart my computer. In previous versions, it would have saved the project as "untitled" or something, but this time I could not find the page I was on. I have searched most spaces on the computer and I can't find this project. Is it gone, or is there a way to recover it?

I am using the most recent version of AI.

[chanaart]

You need to save hte imagewhen you start , so when tyoucrash the temp file will be there. If you did not save it at all there is no way you can find it!

[barbara_a · Accepted solution]

I have found that Illustrator can sometimes recover an unsaved file if Preferences > File Handling and Clipboard > Automatically Save is turned on if you immediately restart Illustrator after Illustrator crashes. A file can't always be recovered, still that setting is something to keep in mind for the future.

There are also third party recovery utilities that can sometimes recover unsaved files. The one I use is R-Studio, and there are many others. However, once you restart your computer it is usually hopeless to recover a file.