Accidently closed indesign document without saving

[LoMa]

I mistaked one document for another and closed the file without saving. When Indesign asked, I clicked, dont save. Now I realise my mistake, and a whole days of work has been erased!!! What can I do? Can anyone help??

[Peter Spier · Accepted solution]

What can you do? Start over. There is no recovery of closed files you didn't save.

[Laubender]

Hi @LoMa ,

I'd say you cannot get it back. You never saved the document this whole day long?

So it's gone; unless perhaps there was a backup running in intervals while you worked with e.g. TimeMachine when on MacOS. But even then it's unclear if you are able to open a not saved file in the state of an open document. I must admit, that I never tried to retrieve something like that from TimeMachine. I assume that you'd need not only the InDesign document, but also the cache files InDesign constantly creates and saves when you switch to a different spread for example…

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

//EDITED

[LoMa]

Normally I would save every 10 min, so seeing now that the document hasnt been saved since yesterday seens almost unreal. This is a nightmare!!! Had hoped that Adobe saves old versions of the document in the cloud somehow for possibly recovery, but then I guess I am screwed ;((

[Rishabh_Tiwari]

Hi,

We're so sorry to hear about that. As other experts shared if the file has not been saved, then most probably the changes you made will be lost. Having said that, you can try to locate a temporary file starting with " DBT" at the below-mentioned locations:

 

• macOS: Users/[User Name]/Library/Cache/Adobe InDesign/Version[#.0]/InDesign Recovery
• Windows: C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Local\Adobe\InDesign\Version [#].0\en_US\Caches\InDesign Recovery

For more information, you can refer to this article https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/indesign-document-recovery.html

Feel free to reach out if you have any further questions.

Regards

Rishabh

[Peter Spier]

Those files only work if InDesign is not shut down properly and are paert of the auto-recovery system. You can't open them directly.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Always save. Use a tag like 'JUNK' if you don't think it's something you will need, a work or test or intermediate file.

You can always delete it later.

I find myself opening a surprising number of "junk" files for one reason or another...

—

[Jumpenjax]

Did you try to open the file in drop down menu/open / look under recent files?

[Scott Falkner]

I haven’t tried this, but if you have an automatic backup system, like Time Machine or BackBlaze you might be able to recover the temporary file InDesign creates when you edit a file.

For example, I have the file “V2021 fact sheet A10.indd” open. In the folder with that file InDesign has created “~2021 fact sheet a1~sr8a)c.idlk”, a temp file where edits are kept until I save and close hte file. I have no idea if restoring that file will recover your lost work. Worth a try.