Archicad not saving

[Brett Brown]

Hi All, for some unknown reason Archicad did not autosave or manually save when I shut down yesterday. Opened the file today and nothing I did yesterday was there. Had a look at the time machine backups all yesterday and the file I was working on never changed. Have had no crashes for months.

Had a similar thing happen on a small revision on a different file I did last week. When I opened yesterday the revision wasn't there. Redid it and another revision yesterday and saved as normal. Both have saved when checked today.

So what can I do when I can't trust a manual save?

Is there a way to get at autosaves from yesterday in time machine?

No experts in support today so any help appreciated.

cheers

[Lingwisyer]

When you say manual save, are you using "Save..." or "Save As..."? If you are using the second, the default save location is not the location the original is, but the last location to which "Save As..." was used. This has resulted in missing files a few times for me and some others but with a quick think back through the projects worked on, they are usually not too hard to find.



Ling.

[Brett Brown]

Hi Ling, definitely "save", if I accidentally picked "save as" it would ask me where to save. cheers

[Barry Kelly]

If you have managed to manually 'Save As' to another location then you should find that the file will be in the 'Select a Recent project' list if you just start the Archicad program (Assuming you have not disabled that opening dialogue box) or you should find them in FILE > OPEN recent files list - highlight the file name and you will see the path in the status bar at the bottom of the screen.

Or you could do a search of you local and network drives through your operating system.

If Archicad thinks you have saved the file successfully on shut down (even if it is to another location unknowingly), then the Autosave files will be deleted.
I have no idea how Time Machine works, but as the Autosave files are in a folder of the user profile (on a Windows machine anyway) I am not sure that they would have been backed up.
If they were backed up though, then restoring them to their original location and then re-starting Archicad may prompt the Autosave process.
I can't say for sure as I have never tried to do this.
The autosave files are not files you can just open - they are a series of files that need to be re-compiled by Archicad when starting the program.

Barry.

[Barry Kelly]

Just out of interest Brett,
Are your files saved on the local hard drive or a network drive?
I had trouble some years ago where a few files on a network drive weren't saving even though we did save them.
No idea what the actual solution was as the IT guys sorted it out.

Barry.

[Brett Brown]

Thanks Barry, problem being I can't trust the manual save. I assume I will have to check the date and time on the file every time before closing Archicad.
I assume the best thing to do now is uninstall Archicad and reinstall to hopefully fix this.
I'm saving to a Dropbox folder on the local hard drive.
cheers

[Anonymous]

I had similar issues when saving to a Dropbox folder, solved by working on ‘normal’ folder and moving file when complete to the Dropbox folder and waiting for it to finish it’s upload/ synching before logging off or shutting down.

Scott

[Brett Brown]

Thanks Scott, Will try the same from now on and see if the issue continues, cheers

[Barry Kelly]

If it did save to the Dropbox folder and was then deleted, maybe you will see it in the "Deleted files' folder?
Or even in your recycle bin for your hard drive (do macs have something like that?).

I am not sure I would trust saving directly to Dropbox.
I would do like Scott suggests and save to you local drive and then transfer to the Dropbox folder.
Logic says it should be the same but the problem with Dropbox is the files can be edited from any location.
So in the master Dropbox folder (somewhere in the cloud?) that file doesn't exist.
When Archicad saves to the Dropbox folder on your machine, maybe it is syncing with the cloud version and assuming the file doesn't exist so is deleting it?

Barry.

[Brett Brown]

I have saved to the Dropbox folder for 10 years and never had a problem. I saved manually last night but opened the file today and its Fridays save. Baffling