InDesign Files Vanished: Seeking Help to Recover Lost Versions

[bgranowski]

5 InDesign files (all different saved versions of the same original file) that I have been working on since August of this year have all disappeared and are not visible anywhere in my file structure. I had the latest one open and was working on it as recently as last Monday, and now all versions of that file are gone without a trace. Has this happened to anyone? I am going to have to recreate it from the jpgs that I exported and sent to the client. What a nightmare!

<Title renamed by MOD>

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Empathy — we've all had something like this happen. But it's very unlikely InDesign would or could do anything but mangle or delete a current workfile.

What platform are you on, and where/how are you storing your files?

A consistent backup plan is a good idea, and besides making at least daily Save-As copies of important projects... they should be moved to a more secure backup location on another drive or server or storage device at least once in a while. It's all too easy to so something like select all files/delete, without having any intention of doing so. Thoughts for the future...

[bgranowski]

I am on a Mac and I store my files on a Samsun Portable SSD external hard drive. The files were something that I was regularly opening and working on and saving in versions -- I had five different versions of the INDD saved as of last Monday, along with exported JPGs from all the versions, and now they are all gone except for one old file from June in the outer folder that is a PSD. Thanks for your help.

[bgranowski]

Also, there is nothing relevant in the trash, and I imagine if I accidentally select-all-files-delete, there would be some version of it in the trash? But perhaps mistaken.

[leo.r]

Have you tried to search all your drives for the files? You could accidentally move it to a different location. If the built-in Spotlight doesn't find anything, try a 3rd-party search tool such as Easy Find. (Spotlight can be unreliable as it only searches drives that it has indexed.)

Also, what version of macOS?

Regardless, as James has already mentioned, you must back up your files regularly to a different drive. Preferably, run an automatic incremental backup solution such as Time Machine. Or store your files on a cloud service (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) which provides its own backup/versioning facilities.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

There are many things that could have happened, but nearly all of them are outside InDesign's behavior and file handling. If you can't find them on a drive/file manager/system level, it's very unlikely ID or its tools can do anything.

Saving to an alternate, genuinely "backup" device like a thumb drive every few days is strongly recommended. No matter how careful your backup plans, if all the files are in one place it's just a matter of the odds that something happens to them.

[bgranowski]

Thanks! Alas.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@bgranowski

So it's not like whole drive has been wiped?

Not sure about Mac software - but maybe try on Windows - to undelete files?