Disappearing files??

This thread was just reactivated. Curious, I did a search with Google for "Windows files disappear".

Some common reasons included:

• Windows 10 automatic upgrade or update
• A virus deleted or hid personal files.
• You logged into a new user account.
• The hard drive is failing.
• Windows created a new user account when it updated

I saw nothing that suggested Photoshop was the cause.

Jane

I encountered this problem today, I tried to save my recent work and I received a message stating that the file location is missing or deleted. 

Now I checked and tried to open my other work and it disappears. 

I look on recent files and I saw some of them but when I clicked it, I just received the same message that the file is missing or deleted. 

I have used Photoshop in a professional (employment) capacity for more than 15 years. I save perhaps 200 times a day, every day. Not once have I experienced a file "just disappear". Never. Ever. And those files aren't gathering dust, I frequently go back and pull up old files.

I'm not trying to "defend Adobe" or anything here. I just find it extremely hard to believe that this happens, but never to me.

What I have experienced, is user error. I've been asleep at the wheel and saved files to wrong locations. I've saved them under a wrong name. I've even, on occasion, overwritten files and lost them that way (in which case I go to my backups and retrieve them). I've done a lot of stupid things. But I've never lost a file.

I am having the same issues. I am not new to photoshop or how to save files. Opening files from the recents list is basically a shortcut to where the actual file is located. The problem is that the actual location of the file can't be found anymore. My students have specific folders they save to on the desktop. We don't use cloud based saving for our main document but save a copy first then move that copy to a cloud based server. I do this because we may not have internet access all the time and data syncying from the cloud doesn't always work. Our issue is that the file is no longer located in their designated folder. Can't be found in any searches. Not in the recovery folders for Adobe. The files seem to simply gone off the computer. This seems to be a new issue with recent updates to Photoshop. I have not found a solution or located any of the files. This happened for about 7-8 of my students recently. I just wanted to let you know that you are not alone. 

Hey everyone,

I am not sure what is going on with these disappearing files--I'm not new to photoshop, but when my students go to access their files, they literally vanish. These aren't cloud files; they do not appear in any searches. Once, the file disappeared and reappeared on restart. Another time, the file vanished and reappeared just before I restarted but disappeared after the restart. I would love to share an image of this; however, that is the whole issue.

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@default1cfez86fhsqb wrote:

When I clicked on it to open it just disappeared? 

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Did you click on it in the Home Screen or with File > Open? If you were using the Home Screen, it shows previews of Recent Files. If you renamed, moved, or deleted the file, it will still show up in the Home Screen until you click it to attempt to open it, then the preview disappears.

Try doing an OS search using the file extension and date filters. If you don't know how, tell us if you are on Mac or Windows.

~ Jane

If you go to File > Open Recent..., do you see it in the list? 

It was saved to your hard drive, do you recall moving it? You could do a search in the Finder (macOS) or File Explorer (Windows) for it.

If it's a cloud document, you can try the following solutions:

Solve Photoshop cloud document errors