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InDesign Vanished File

Community Beginner ,
Feb 11, 2021 Feb 11, 2021

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I was working on a book file with 250+ pages and then my InDesign started getting sluggish. I saved the file (with CMND + S) and then restarted the software to see if the sluggishness would dissapear. As I opened InDesign there were no sign of the file I just saved on the recent files list, the file vanished from the folder it was originally saved to and now InDesign won't open any .indd files at all.  I was using the latest version (16.1).

 

I tried everything: rebooting my computer (MacBook Pro), going through every .indd file on my hard drive, searching on InDesign's recovery folder, installing older versions of InDesign and none of these worked. Funny fact is that I remember saving the vanished file around 8:05pm and as I was searching through my folders, I find a old .indd file I haven't opened since April/20 last edited today 8:06pm.

 

I'm completely sad and frustated because I've lost 1 week of hard work and I just wanted to know if someone has gone through a similar situation or if I can somehow recover this vanished file.

 

Thanks.

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Bug , Performance , Sync and storage

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Beginner , Feb 12, 2021 Feb 12, 2021

EDIT: I found the missing file on a folder I've never saved the file to after perfoming a file recovery scan on my hard drive. It seems that the file was automatically deleted and it was not showing up normally in that odd folder otherwise it would have shown up when I searched for its name in Finder. The file only appeared after the recovery scan was done and it appeared as a file that had been deleted.

 

I still don't know if this was a MacOS bug or InDesign's, and I still don't know why InDesig

...

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Community Expert ,
Feb 12, 2021 Feb 12, 2021

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Did you do a week's work and didn't make any back-up copies?

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 12, 2021 Feb 12, 2021

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I was relying only on TimeMachine's automatic backups, and even with these backups done, I could not find any sign of the lost file in the previous backups (and it had at least 1 backup a day during the time I first created the file and the time it went missing). But as I just edited the post with its outcome, I was able to recover the file through a file recovery scan.

Thanks for taking your time and replying.

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 12, 2021 Feb 12, 2021

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EDIT: I found the missing file on a folder I've never saved the file to after perfoming a file recovery scan on my hard drive. It seems that the file was automatically deleted and it was not showing up normally in that odd folder otherwise it would have shown up when I searched for its name in Finder. The file only appeared after the recovery scan was done and it appeared as a file that had been deleted.

 

I still don't know if this was a MacOS bug or InDesign's, and I still don't know why InDesign stopped opening .indd files after that bug happened, but the lesson I take from all this is to always backup your files, folks.

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Community Expert ,
Feb 12, 2021 Feb 12, 2021

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It's important when you've been working on a document for some time to do a Save As and give it a incrementally named file (name1a.indd, name1b.indd and so on) this clears out the crud that can build up in a document and that can cause corruption. It means you can also get to earlier version if something goes wrong with your current one.

I would also suggest saving externaly as well, as well as locally, so you can still access your documents from another computer if somethimg happens to your one!

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New Here ,
Feb 22, 2023 Feb 22, 2023

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Im doing exactly that but return to find only v1, but no V2, v3 etc., despite having a v7 PDF exported that morning!!

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New Here ,
Jan 13, 2023 Jan 13, 2023

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I had this same issue and was never able to recover the file. It is super unfortunate that this would happen from such a robust program. I was hoping the auto-save would be safe but not the case at all. Saving it to the hard drive from this point on. Wish I had total recall. 

 

Sick to stomach....

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 29, 2023 Jun 29, 2023

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Jeremy276356759y the same just happened to me. A whole day's work, vanished! I'm pretty sure I did save regularly while I was working on it. The file is still there but when I open it it is almost blank, as if I had just set it up.

Ugh. 😞

 

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Community Expert ,
Jun 29, 2023 Jun 29, 2023

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That's very unusual. Are you certain you're opening the latest version?

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 29, 2023 Jun 29, 2023

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Thank you for your reply! It now lists the time I started working on it. As if all the following hours never happened. I checked on Time Machine and on my external hard drive but even there it only has that version from hours ago.

I wonder if my computer is infected by some file erasing bug. Something weird happened in one of my emails too, a couple of months ago. It was a long draft. While I was looking at it, all the text but one line disappeared in front of my eyes. Never found it again.

 

 

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 29, 2023 Jun 29, 2023

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I even uninstalled all the versions of InDesign I had on my computer (there were three.)  Shut it down and let it sit for a while. Then restarted and reinstalled the latest version of the program. Nothing had changed. 😞

 

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Community Expert ,
Jun 29, 2023 Jun 29, 2023

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Is the document listed in Recent Files in InDesign?

Another thought, is it an old machine, if so, it might be a faulty hard disk?

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 29, 2023 Jun 29, 2023

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Yes, it is. And again, that same "beginning " file. I work on a MacBook Pro from 2019. That's not so old, is it? 😊 Thank you for trying to help me!

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Community Expert ,
Jun 29, 2023 Jun 29, 2023

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Sorry I can't offer more, maybe someone else may have a suggestion.

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 29, 2023 Jun 29, 2023

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No worries. Thank you again for trying! Luckily it's all still fresh in my head and I'll just have to do it over again. But I will follow your advice I read of regularly doing a save as and renaming the file. That's a really good idea! 

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