Illustrator crashed and the file vanished

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
August 4, 2022
1 reply
2285 views

I was working on adobe illustrator and built a file, I had just made an export and the illustrator shut down in the background and the file vanished from my drive.

I can't find a crash report or error log, can't find the file in App Data - Roaming - Adobe Illustrator - ....

I can't find the file using recovery tools either. Why did this happen? And how can I find my file again?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Was the file already saved?

If not, then your file is probably gone.

When you relaunch Illustrator after a crash it will search for a recovery file. If there is one, it will ask you if you want to try and recover the file. You must click OK or Illustrator will delete the recovery file.

Recovery might fail.

If there is no recovery file or Illustrator can't read it, then that is that.

Is the recovery even turned on in the preferences?

You must save early, save often and save different versions. Don't ever rely on a computer to do this for you.

K

KapeLAuthor

Participant

The file was saved in the drive. The recovery was on in preferences, file handling...
I even did that thing where you hit Ctrl+S twice or thrice before exporting the file. The file was saved. Repeatedly and often as I worked on it for over 3-4 days.
I tried going through the recovery files and an Adobe professional tried to as well. I even tried Recuva and other drive scanning tools to try and find the file. But it just vanished from the drive. The only thing I didn't have turned on was file history in windows. I don't understand how a file can just vanish from a drive. Does illustrator/adobe rename files randomly?

When I popped illustrator back open, it didn't even give me a pop up to open a recovery version. The file just stopped existing

Anshul_Saini

Community Manager

Hi there,

We are sorry to hear about this. This is very abnormal behaviour. However, I would like to inform you that Illustrator doesn't hold the power to delete any file from your device.

As you mentioned that you were working on the same file for over 3-4 days, it is possible that under Illustrator preferences > File handling > Turn off data recovery for complex documents was checked; that's why file recovery didn't pop up on relaunching the app.

I know the damage is done but would you mind sharing a few details like:

Would you mind confirming the format in which you exported the file? Was it the same folder in which the original file was saved?
Where was the original Ai file saved (Network Drive folder (Creative Cloud File/Dropbox/ Google Drive) or System HDD or a Shared Folder on System)?
After the crash when Illustaror relaunched, was the file showing under the recent tab on the home screen of Illustrator?

Looking forward to your response.

Thanks & Regards,

Anshul Saini

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