Two missing files. Where did they go?

TidBITS Talk
22

Autosave here means it saves the changes as you make them, like TextEdit.

I think there’s a reason for that. It is the same way on Windows; Word and Excel have never supported autosave except to OneDrive, and maybe Sharepoint.

Which I think is the clue. I’ve noticed that if you take an Excel spreadsheet, put it in OneDrive, get a new machine, then sync it from OneDrive to that machine, what you get is not byte-for-byte identical to what you started with.

I don’t think OneDrive is synching the entire file at once, I think it is leveraging code that was originally used for document sharing in Sharepoint (i.e. multiple people updating the same file). That is, it is treating the file more like a database that has pieces of it getting updated in real time.

And there’s some relationship between Sharepoint and OneDrive. I think OneDrive started out using the same technology as mapping to a Sharepoint, which is why it had the same restrictions on file names – which was much more restrictive than the Windows file system.

So, putting this all together, I think that Office application Autosave is leveraging technology that is only in OneDrive, inherited from document sharing in Sharepoint.

But I could be wrong.

23

As far as I know, Microsoft’s auto-save feature has always worked that way.

Yes. As far as I can tell, OneDrive and SharePoint are pretty much the same, the difference being who is the administrator (Microsoft or your corporate IT people).

I think you’re right about that. AutoSave runs far too quickly, even with huge documents, to be doing a full save each time. I assume there’s some kind of journal file (maybe stored as a part of the document’s zip file, maybe as SharePoint metadata) which gets resolved and integrated at some later time (e.g. when you download the file or perhaps when you explicitly issue a Save command).

Which is very different from what (I think) Apple’s auto-save mechanism does.

24

If not using OneDrive, take a look at Word’s AutoRecover feature. It will allow you to recover edits made between save operations. It also works regardless of the location of the document.

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25

I have a few ideas that are possibly worth a try.

(1) Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac. See Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support for how. It so happens that I did this in the past few days and realized a terrific improvement in how search (Spotlight) performs.

(2) When you are performing a search with Spotlight

(2a) Be sure that you have not excluded any categories from Spotlight searches. For that, open the app “System Settings”, then click Spotlight in the column of choices on the left, then confirm that all boxes are checked. I am referring to the boxes next to the categories listed beneath the text
Search results
Only selected categories will appear in Spotlight search results.

(2b) Expand the search to include System Files. To do this, initiate a search; that is, open a Finder window and type what you want in the search box, then type Return (by default, the search box is located in the Toolbar [top edge of window] near the right end); next click the plus sign near the upper right corner of the window, typically just to the right of the word Save; next click on the left-most dropdown menu and choose the last option, which is “Other…”; next, in the dialog box “Select a search attribute:” that should have opened, click on the Attribute “System files” – and check the box on that line, then click OK; then, you should be able to make a choice for your search regarding System files, with the appropriate choice being “are included”.

(2c) Expand the search to include also invisible files. To do this, proceed as in (2b), clicking again on the plus sign, but instead of clicking on the Attribute “System files”, click instead on the Attribute “File invisible”; this will yield a choice called “File visibility”, with the appropriate choice being “Visible or Invisible”.

(2d) Be sure the scope of your search is “This Mac” rather than only the folder you opened a Finder window for at the start of (2a). You determine the scope of your search by clicking a choice to the right of “Search:” near the upper-left corner of the window.

(3) Try an alternative to Spotlight. I have used the app “Find Any File” with good results. See https://findanyfile.app as has already been suggested.

26

You’ve probably thought of this, or someone else mentioned it. Sometimes when I save a file I forget to look where it is being saved, and the app decides to save it somewhere I’d never suspect. Pixelmator saves to its iCloud folder unless I remember to change that to a folder I want before hitting Return.

When I can’t find a file, I will start new file, and then do a Save, watching where the app wants to save the file. Often that’s where my missing files have gone.

HoudahSpot has helped me too.

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27

Maybe on Windows, but not on a Mac. Prior to my switching to Office 365, I was able to set an autosave location on my local filesystem. That was in Office 2011, on my 2010 MBP (starting on Snow Leopard, eventually running Sierra) that I eventually replaced with a 2019 MBP. The 2019 requires Catalina or newer, and Office 2011 won’t run on Catalina. That was when I switched to 365.

I don’t believe that SharePoint was available on Macs until some time after it was introduced on Windows, and OneDrive wasn’t on Macs until much later. So there likely would have been no Microsoft cloud product that Macs could save to at the time when Autosave was introduced.

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28

That’s a different kind of autosave, isn’t it? Is that auto-backup? What did it actually do?

29

The feature was specifically called Autosave. It would automatically save open files to disk at a fixed interval (I believe it was five minutes) if they had any changes since the last save. There was a default location for files that had not previously been manually saved, and it would save to the existing file for those that had been manually saved already. All of this took place on the local filesystem.

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30

I had a lot of issues finding my documents after setting up my system, all files were saved to iCloud. (It took more effort then I would have liked to change the default setting for MacOS 15.2)

So if you do not find the files on his system look on the iCloud folders or Microsoft OneDrive.
Hoping they are there.

31

I wonder if a file recovery tool is worth a try.
It could be that the disk’s master index of files got somehow corrupted, which would explain why “find a file” tools wouldn’t find it.

On the other hand, the file name would still be shown is any lists of “recent files”. Selecting from that list would result in a file not found error.

I’m not familiar with Time Machine so I can’t comment on why it’s not in the TM backups

32

The Microsoft feature you’re thinking of is “Save AutoRecover info” and it is under Save Options in Word Preferences. I have it turned on for every 10 minutes and I have found it works pretty well. However, you’ll never find it if you don’t look around in Preferences. I forget where the recovery files are stored, but what happens when you reopen Word after a crash is that it opens the file and gives you the option to save it.

33

That’s what replaced the feature I’m talking about. This was back in Office 2011. Autorecover info is not saved to the actual file, but to a separate location. This feature basically hit Cmd-S every five minutes.

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It creates the auto-recover files as Finder-hidden files in the same directory as the document. The recovery file’s name is the original file’s name with the first two characters replaced with ~$. So Floopity.docx has its auto-recover data in ~$oopity.docx.

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35

hey, you might try this: have her create a new document. Type a few characters into it. Then choose file SAVE AS. That frequently will take you to the default location for file saving. (Don’t actually save the file; just go there and notice where you are.)

Hope this helps.

2 Likes
36

I picked a random folder and searched it for documents with ~$ in their names and got a bunch of files with that in their names. The funder says the Word files all contain 162 bytes. PowerPoint files contain 165 bytes. I can’t recover any content from any of them. That’s a weird way to hide things. I wonder how many of those files may be hiding on your Macs?

37

Where have these files been for all these years? How and where were they found to start editing them? You say the Mac is new. Were those files migrated from an old installation? Are they perhaps part of another account or id?

PS: Recover Disappeared Desktop Files/Folders On Mac [2024].

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38

I would check if there is more than one account on the Mac.

39

Crumbs! I didn’t expect this thread to get so big.
Thanks again everyone.
Just an update. Jay has been taken ill and so everything is now on hold until she recovers.

In answer to the two most recent posts. There is only the one account and as far as I’m aware they have always been on the desktop. (Don’t take that as fact because I may be wrong.)

Both files have been used regularly since the last migration back in August/September but disappeared about a week before Christmas. Both at more or less the same time.

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40

These are not saved copies of your documents, but checkpoint-data generated by the auto-recovery mechanism. The idea is that the app will open your document and then use the data in the auto-recovery file to re-apply any changes made since the file was last-saved.

If you don’t have the original file that goes with it, that auto-save data is useless.

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41

I wondered what they could do with 165 bytes. So the auto-recovery files are what is kept current so they can be accessed after a crash, and it seems to work pretty well.