ctl z removed my files from existence, please help fast !

[Anonymous]

This morning I embarked on a day's long journey of editing about a dozen dwg files. I started by copying the old files to a new folder, (so i could keep the old files in existence) and began editing each of the newly created files as needed. This evening, when i was finished, i needed to copy the newly edited files into dropbox to send to my customer. I highlighted all the files in windows explorer, but instead of hitting 'ctl C' to copy, I accidentally hit 'ctl Z' and windows undid the the last command that had taken place in windows explorer, which was the creation of all of the files i had been editing. I didnt realize what had happened at the time so I navigated away from that folder to try to locate my files, thinking they may be in the recycle bin, or somewhere else. By the time a realized what had happed, 'ctl Y' was unavailable to restore my lost files. Having exhausted all other resources, I cannot figure this out, and microsoft was not at all helpful.  Is there any avenue within autocad to find my files? They are not in my autosave location. It seems that windows may have totally erased my files from existence. Please help me if you can! Thanks!

[steven-g]

Unfortunately, Autocad cannot undo mistakes made in Windows. You could try checking in the options dialogue under the files tab for any support file paths. But if you saved the drawings correctly before closing Autocad and then the error occurred there probably won't be and temporary files saved.

Your only hope would be a complete search of your hard drive in Windows explorer looking for those 'filenames' but that sounds doubtful. I must say it sounds a bit suspect that Ctrl+z would physically remove o folder.

[RobDraw]

I've made the same mistake using cut and paste, Ctrl+X, and closing the source window. Goodbye files. The work needed to be redone. There is no fix.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the replies. I have since redone the work. After about 3 hours of troubleshooting, redoing the work was my best and most timely option. By shear virtue of back luck, each file I edited was never subject to autocad's autosave function, because I was never working in any particular file long enough for an autosave to take place (4-5 minutes of editing max). I did a whole cpu search for the file names and what it found was the folder where autocad keeps shortcuts to recently used files, but the files themselves were gone. I employed a couple of software options that can be used to recover lost files, to no avail. I even tried throwing the computer off a balcony, having it smashed to bits below, thinking, as in zoolander, that maybe the files were "in the computer". They were not there.

This is extraordinarily similar to when Marty & Doc when back to 1955, meddled around, and created a tangent universe where Marty and his family never came into existence. My only problem is I didn't have a forward moving time machine. I had recreate the future manually. FML. 

[RobDraw]

FYI, autosave is not the tool for this kind of lost work. Those files are deleted (by default) when a file is saved. .bak files would have been an option if you were saving on a regular basis. Those would be the state of the drawing when it was saved before the last save.

[Anonymous]

Yeah I thought this to be the case as well, but the .bak files disappeared after I navigated away from the folder where them and the dwgs once were. 

[pendean]

BAK files will never disappear on their own if they are there from AutoCAD's SAVE command action: do you have some kind of clean up tool running on your PC or network, or place them in a unique location not in the same folder as the DWG files?

[RobDraw]

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@pendean wrote:
BAK files will never disappear on their own if they are there from AutoCAD's SAVE command action:

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They would if they were included with the selection of the .dwgs.

[Anonymous]

Here's the exact sequence that occurred in my situation, in case any one is curious enough and has time to run an experiment. 

1) Open windows file explorer and navigate to some cad files 

2) Create a new folder 

3) Copy CAD files into new folder (collectively as opposed to one at a time. Hightlight all, copy, paste)

4) Minimize file explorer DO NOT CLOSE IT OUT OR PERFORM ANY MORE OPERATIONS WITHIN FILE EXPLORER 

5) Open Autocad, open, edit, save, and close each newly copied CAD file. 

6) Get back into the minimized file explorer 

7) Highlight all the CAD files and hit 'ctl z'. (undo)

    - at this point the .dwgs should have disappeared, but the .baks should remain

😎 Navigate away from this folder and attempt to locate the lost files 

    -for me, doing this eliminated the possibility of using the 'ctl y' (redo) command 

    -the question here would be: if I had hit the redo command immediately after the undo command, would my files have returned? 

9) Go back into the troubled folder - are the .baks still there or are they gone? where are the dwgs? 

[pendean]

But OP wrote:
.... disappeared after I navigated away from the folder ....

[steven-g]

For me, following that chain of action, the bak files still remain in the new folder. That wouldn't help in this case as the bak files would be a copy of the original files and not of the edited version, so you would still lose your work. And yes moving away from that folder changing drives and "looking" around then return to the folder and Ctrl+y returns the files but if you did anything else in between that would no doubt break the Windows undo chain.