Recover file

[Anonymous]

I was on a drawing earlier today and when I tried to open it again I could see the "preview' image of what I was working on but I can't open it.  When I pull it up it says "Drawing file not valid". I have also looked and there is no back up file. I ran 'Recover' and it shows the file I used today, but again, can't open.  It's a fairly large file for a current project. 

Any advise??

[Charles_Shade]

Hate to say it but likely the file is dead.

The preview is only a snapshot of the last time it was saved.

Do you do any regular (daily) backup?

If so you are likely going to need to find that backup and recreate your hard work of the day.

Autosave is iffy at best. Not a tool that should be relied on. I learned that lesson many years ago and yes; all of us have had a file die like yours seems to have. Small consolation I know.

Over the last year or so I have had Windows run a task every half hour (usually the pop up is more often) that pops up a SAVE NOW! or whatever you want to prompt me to hit Save. Habit notwithstanding it is easy to get in the groove and have an extended period of time go by before remebering to Save.

[sthompson1021]

If you have autosave turned on, you could look for a .sv$ file. Unless you changed it they should be saved in the C / USERS / YOURNAME / APPDATA / LOCAL / TEMP file.

[pendean]

Things to try explained here https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/AutoCA...

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your feed back Charles!



I do have Back-up set automatically every 20 minutes.

I have typed in the file name.bak and it can't even find a back-up .that's
what I don't understand. I've retrieved drawings before that way.

Any idea on another way to search for a backup file??



Lynne

[email protected]



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[Emmsleys]

If the recover command didn't work the troubleshooting options may be limited... 

Were you abel to locate any of the sc$ or bak? 

Did you by any chance do a manual save prior to todays work?

[Charles_Shade]

@sthompson1021 suggestion for the .sv$ back up file is the potential last line of defense. Search that too.

There are some older posts here (or in a Full AutoCAD Forum) from @rkmcswain concerning operations such as Print that can cause AutoSAVE to fail and the user not know.

I used to add a startup routine from the desktop icon that I generally started from to make sure AutoSAVE was turned on with each new session but with the difficulty in trusting AutoSAVE  I have gone to other means for saving as stated earlier.

As well as adding QSAVE to buttons that I freguently use. While this slows down drawing time a bit at least there are some defualt Saves that happen that are virtually seemless for work flow and have the added advantage of not having to recreate because of a crash.

If you can it may be worth posting the file here to see if the same results happen to another user.

[Anonymous]

I just went through everything in the TEMP as suggested and can't find the
.sv$ back up.



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[Charles_Shade]

Do you use that default TEMP file or have you changed it to something else from OPTION, Files tab, Automatic Save File Location?

Or more inportantly did you search the entire computer just in case?

Do you have Automatic Save set on your system?

[pendean]

In Windows Explorer's address bar, type %TEMP% and hit <enter>: that's the default folder AutoCAD/LT uses for autosave files assuming (1) that was not changes in OPTIONS (2) autosave actually happened in the first place.

[Anonymous]

I did find a BAK file when I pulled up %temp%. Now I'm having trouble
opening it.



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[pendean · Accepted solution]

You have to rename the extension from BAK to DWG, but first you have to tell Windows Explorer to show them to you http://www.howtohaven.com/system/show-file-extensions-in-windows-explorer.shtml

[Charles_Shade]

Glad you found it. Good way to end a week.

[Anonymous]

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