Recovering a Adobe Illustrator file when it nuked the recovery data folder?

[Issac Liu]

Hi, recently Adobe Illustrator 27.5 crashed on me while I was working on a project. I went to the DataRecovery folder (C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator 27 Settings\en_US\x64\DataRecovery) but there was nothing in \x64\. What do I do? It also seemed to have just decided not to save my work to the cloud at all around 2 hours before the crash.

[Monika Gause]

You were working on an AIC file?

Or on a file saved locally?

Or not saved at all?

If it was an AIC file, then please check in your Creative Cloud documents. 

The recovery function is not a backup. And also: when your computer (or Illustrator) crashes while saving, then all the affected files are most probably toast.

You have to make backups. And save different version. There must not be only one file.

[Issac Liu]

Yeah, I was working on a AIC file. However, the version in the cloud doesn't have the work that's gone missing. I had autosave to the cloud on for every 5 minutes, so I was confused as to why it didn't autosave to the cloud.

[Monika Gause]

@Anshul_Saini can you please help here?

[Anshul_Saini]

Hi @Issac Liu,

We apologize for the inconvenience you experienced with the auto-save feature in Adobe Illustrator for Cloud Document. We understand how frustrating it can be to lose progress on your work.

We assure you that our engineers are constantly working to improve the auto-save feature and make it more reliable. We recommend checking that your internet connection is stable and strong, which could affect the auto-save functionality. However, in some rare cases, complex or large-size files take longer than expected to back up to Cloud, which could be the case here. Sometimes, file recovery for complex files may be disabled in order to prioritize the performance of the application. However, manual saving is still available as an option to ensure the file is saved even for cloud documents.

Also, you may check the version history of the AIC doc (https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/help/open-revert-cloud-document-version.html) to check if there are any previous versions available from the 2-hour window prior to the crash.

Best,

Anshul Saini

[Issac Liu]

There's nothing there from the 2 hour period since the file didn't get autosaved to the cloud