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Help ASAP! Frequently saved part, reopened next day, hours of work missing?! Please help!!

Question asked by Ella Harvey on Dec 12, 2018
Latest reply on Dec 13, 2018 by Steve Calvert

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Was working on a part last night, dutifully saving every 20 mins. Went to reopen the file today and it was noted to have last been modified/saved hours prior to the time I remember finishing up and clicking the save button for the last time. Is there any way of rectifying this or must I accept my fate and redo the whole thing?

Any help will be much appreciated, I am a student who was happily on track for a deadline but am now heavily behind!

Edit: Ironic how the forum auto-saves messages every minute, huh?

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S. Casale Dec 12, 2018 2:56 PM
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Are you working with PDM? Network locations?
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Frederick Law Dec 12, 2018 2:58 PM
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May you saved it somewhere else?
Did you do a save as?
Go to File menu, Open Recent.
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Jim Steinmeyer Dec 12, 2018 2:58 PM
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Search the hard drive for the part. Hopefully you will find a second copy of the part saved in the hinderlands of your hard drive.

Otherwise, as many of us here have learned, you can usually recreate the part faster the second,or third, or fourth, time.
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Ella Harvey @ Frederick Law on Dec 12, 2018 3:55 PM
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Already tried this unfortunately, thank you though.
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Ella Harvey @ Jim Steinmeyer on Dec 12, 2018 3:55 PM
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Not the most knowledgeable with computers, how exactly do I go about searching the hard drive? This is probably my only hope before I reembark, so thank you.
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Ella Harvey @ S. Casale on Dec 12, 2018 3:55 PM
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I'm not too sure what you mean. I was saving the file to my downloads folder on my PC (as this was where the file was opened from) could this be the reason?
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Vladimir Urazhdin Dec 12, 2018 3:05 PM
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There is a possibility that finished part is saved in different place (computer or network). Try to search your part in all available locations. Good luck!
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Jim Riddell Dec 12, 2018 3:09 PM
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As has been suggested, try searching your computer for the part file as name*.*, you might be lucky enough to find a later copy that you can open. Hopefully you just changed the folder it was saved in. Did you accidentally save it to a USB or other network drive?
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Ella Harvey @ Jim Riddell on Dec 12, 2018 3:55 PM
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After opening the document from the downloads folder on my computer I was just clicking the save button, could this have been my shortcoming?
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Tom Gagnon @ Ella Harvey on Dec 12, 2018 3:57 PM
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Only if you had also re-downloaded it and overwritten the work done. I don't think you'd do that intentionally.
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Paul Salvador Dec 12, 2018 3:58 PM
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..try and see if there is a backup.. in the /SWBackupDirectory...?
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S. Casale @ Ella Harvey on Dec 12, 2018 4:01 PM
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Ella Harvey wrote:

I'm not too sure what you mean. I was saving the file to my downloads folder on my PC (as this was where the file was opened from) could this be the reason?
Nope. However, as others have suggested, try searching you pc? The Open Recent doesn't automagically open up the last that you saved? Did you try that?

It's a part so there are no external references that would call to look in an other folder than what you were specifically working in...
Perhaps, there is a file with the same name with a prefix of "~" in the folder?
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Tom Gagnon @ Paul Salvador on Dec 12, 2018 4:04 PM
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Good idea Paul.
In SWx Options, you will find these two locations here, both worth investigating IF active. Note that one of mine is not currently.
.
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Wayne Schafer Dec 12, 2018 4:03 PM
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I am not real clear about student SW but check here and see if auto back was on and where it was saving too.
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Alex Lachance Dec 12, 2018 4:04 PM
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Ella,

You need to put a little bit more details if you need help. SolidWorks version, some screenshot perhaps, etc... There's a thread made to briefly sum up the creation of threads but I can't find it.

Anyways, I read that you were modifying something from your download folder. Could that part happen to be a part/assembly from one of your provider? If that is the case, perhaps you are trying to edit a .step or .igs and that is why it doesn't work?

The new 3DInterConnect(I think that is the name) allows you to work with .steps without extracting them, as far as I'm aware. Perhaps that is what caused your changes to not be saved?
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Jim Riddell @ Ella Harvey on Dec 12, 2018 4:06 PM
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Ella Harvey wrote:

After opening the document from the downloads folder on my computer I was just clicking the save button, could this have been my shortcoming?
It might if your download folder was corrupted or somehow you couldn't really save to that directory.
Lesson to learn - always set up a default folder (by project is the way we do it) to work from.

It happens to the best of us. Computers are heartless a$$holes.
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Ella Harvey @ Tom Gagnon on Dec 12, 2018 4:09 PM
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The auto-recover was enabled in my settings however there is nothing in the location specified, unfortunately. Thanks for your help though.
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Wayne Schafer @ Tom Gagnon on Dec 12, 2018 4:10 PM
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Bright minds think alike
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Ella Harvey @ Alex Lachance on Dec 12, 2018 4:14 PM
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Apologies for the lack of detail, I was only introduced to solidworks 2 months ago. The file type is 'SOLIDWORKS Part Document' and was downloaded from an online filestore to my pc. Does this help at all?
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Tom Gagnon @ Wayne Schafer on Dec 12, 2018 4:12 PM
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In my case, only after a prompt from Paul.
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Paul Salvador @ Ella Harvey on Dec 12, 2018 4:13 PM
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..well,.. another option.. is trying/using a file recover software?
Download Recuva | Recover deleted files, free!
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Josh Brady @ Ella Harvey on Dec 12, 2018 4:15 PM
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Ella Harvey wrote:

After opening the document from the downloads folder on my computer I was just clicking the save button, could this have been my shortcoming?
Was the file inside a .zip file when you downloaded it? If so, you need to search your temp directories... May be deleted by now.

When you open a file that's inside a .zip file, Windows automatically unzips behind the scenes into a temporary file location, then it opens up that unzipped file. If all you did was click "Save", you were saving your changes to that unzipped version that's somewhere in your temp files. The changes never get pushed back into the .zip file, and nobody will ever tell you.

If you are super-unlucky, opening the file from the .zip again may make Windows unzip the same file to the same folder, and since it's just a temp directory, might overwrite the file it created last time with no warning. I'm not sure on this point... It might avoid overwrites.

If this is the case, open some other file from inside a .zip file. Doesn't matter what kind of file... Then do File->Save As. The "Save As" window should start in the current directory, which should be some type of temp directory. That's where to start looking for your SW file.
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Walter Fetsch @ Ella Harvey on Dec 12, 2018 4:15 PM
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Browsers have a nasty habit of deleting files that they have downloaded, when you close the window. I've had it happen many times, so I feel your pain. Always save your downloaded parts out of the Downloads folder before working on them.
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Ella Harvey @ Ella Harvey on Dec 12, 2018 4:18 PM
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The filestore is my own as part of the uni's network of computers. The file is entirely my own and not downloaded from an external source so to speak.
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Ella Harvey @ Walter Fetsch on Dec 12, 2018 4:28 PM
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Looks like this will have been the issue, if only I'd known sooner!!
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Help ASAP! Frequently saved part, reopened next day, hours of work missing?! Please help!!

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