Can't Find Autosaved Files

[Megan Kuhn]

I'm trying to find my autosaved files, so I went to Preferences > File Handling & Clipboard to see where Illustrator is saving them to. 

It's showing the folder as /Users/...ences/Adobe Illustrator 23 Settings/en_US/DataRecovery.

I'm assuming that the "...ences" is "Preferences," so I typed in /Users/Preferences/Adobe Illustrator 23 Settings/en_US/DataRecovery.

This just takes me to /Users. What am I doing wrong? How do I get to the folder with my autosaved files? 

I use Illustrator all the time, and I rarely get the notification that Autosave has been turned off due to the complexity of the file. Because of this, I would think that there would definitely be files in /Users/Preferences/Adobe Illustrator 23 Settings/en_US/DataRecovery, wherever that folder is.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

This is not Autosave.

It's file recovery. It tries to save your state of work every so often (with emphasis on "try" and with emphasis on "state of work"). You won't find AI files in there. You won't find files in there if you just quit Illustrator. There will only be files if Illustrator could save your state of work AND if Illustrator crashed.

The next restart it will then show you that there are files and if you want to recover and then you will have to click on YES or the files are gone.

If you are looking into Autosave, get the plugin Autosaviour.

BTW: The preferences are in your user library. It's hidden by default on Mac OS. There are countless explanations on how to show the hidden user library on Mac OS.

[Megan Kuhn]

Thanks for clearing that up!