Indesign Book File Disappearing from Server

[clairen65523124]

I really hope y'all can help me.

I work in a magazine company. So, each month, I create a book file of all the Indesign documents which is the magazine. This problem started last month. The book file disappeared from the server, so I had to create another book file. I was really shocked. I have never seen this before. That book file went away the next morning. I asked my co worker to create a book file just to see if it's just me. Well that afternoon, that book file disappeared. I'm at lost for words. Anyways, towards the end of working in the magazine, I created PDFS and I haven't been in the book file. It's still there in the folder till this day.

So this month, I occurred the same situation. I explained to my boss what's going on. She asked the IT guy (does not work for this company) what we can do. Well I did not get much helpful information. Just general stuff, like "use the search bar to search for the book file" or "save it to a specific place". I already searched in the search bar and in the trash search bar. The book file is nowhere to be found. Since the book file would disappear over and over again, so I started saving in different places: outside a folder, desktop and drag it to server and in a specific file (when I save the book file "save as" in a specific place on the server). I have been very patient.

The book file is still disappearing from the server. I found a way to work around it. I saved one to my desktop. So I can always get it back from my desktop by dragging it to the server. All the files will be updated. So this works for now. But since the server is not working right, I'm worried that something else might go wrong and cause a bigger problem. Sorry, if this is really confusing, but please ask questions if you don't understand. I really want to solve this problem I am having.

I don't know what else to do. HELPPPPPPPP

[Scott Citron]

Whatever is happening to your book file has nothing to do with InDesign. The fact that the book file (.indb) you save locally to your desktop does not disappear proves that InDesign is not to blame. Again, I'd recommend discussing this problem once more with your IT guy. I'm also wondering if, perhaps, the book files are not really lost, but someone being made invisible when saved to your network?

[clairen65523124]

Well that's good to know that it's not indesign. I knew it was the server acting up. What do you mean by "made invisible when saved to my network"? Would you mind explaining that part to me?

[Scott Citron]

In MacOS, files can be made invisible by clicking on a check box in the Attributes panel of the Get Info box. What I don't know is whether making a file invisible can happen automatically somehow by some other than manual intervention. I'm assuming Windows OS has some similar property, but I know zero about Windows.

[clairen65523124]

This is screenshot of the book file info. Do you see anything in the screenshot that rings a bell or looks weird? I don't see the attribute dropdown. So I'm not sure what to do next.

[SJRiegel]

Do your book file names always begin with an underscore? It may be that the underscore character at the start of the name is causing your server to interpret the file as some kind of system file, and so is hiding it.

[clairen65523124]

Well, I have saved the book file with and without the underscore both times. It did not make a difference.

[andreavagas]

We've had our .indb file disappear twice in the last week. It's bizarre. IT did a search of all drives on the server to no avail. I'm going to make a new book file and work on it from my desktop. We're on Windows. I'm praying it doesn't happen agaon. The book is nearly 325 pages.

[Scott Citron]

I just realized that the reason you don't see Attributes > Invisible is because I use a must-have Finder replacement app called Path Finder. Among the many enhancements to the standard Mac Finder is the Attributes pane in the Get Info panel. I'm sure there's a way to make a file visible/invisible in the Finder, but I don't know how to do it.

[Graphics50]

That just happened to me. InDesign file I was working on disappeared from the Windows Server right after I tried to do a Save As;

Here is how it went: InDesign crashed as I was doing a Save As and I look in the Finder and tried to quickly copy the file to my desktop but it said that the file didn't exist and it disappeared from the Finder. I then re-started ID and I got the message that it could not recover the file because it didn't exist and it gave me a few options and I chose to recover later (because since it didn't exist, I could recover it later, but not now).

This has happened about 3 times in the last 3 months or so. Luckily, since the second times it happened, I've taken the habit to save a copy of my ID files every couple of hours.

I'm on a MacBook Pro using InDesign CC 2018

[shawnw68401942]

For more than three months now, I have had the InDesign Book document disappear from our server at least 4 times. Recently all our files were moved to a new server and things were going well, until today. The book feature documnet has disappeared again.  From what I can tell, there is no way to make this document invisible. I would like to know if the issue has been solved on anyone else's servers and if so, how was it solved? This is a huge issue, when we are on a deadline and have to stop and recreate the Book. Thank you.