Please help me. Something happened in TextEdit

[Macguy97]

Hi everyone, I'm still new so if this is in the wrong thread, please excuse me.

I just spent quite a while writing a very long document that had a heap of crucial information in it. Suddenly, just as I finished, I went to save it and as the usual dialogue appeared, I don't know what happened.

Seeing as the Don't Save button is now spread away from the Save and Cancel buttons, I don't know how I managed, or seemed to have managed clicking Don't Save by mistake. I thought I hit cancel, but the last thing I recall in the corner of my eye was the document flashing away.

Untitled 2, the name of the document still appeared in the recently opened submenu - until I clicked it, and then it disappeared, and then again under the Recent Items of the Apple menu.

I immediately put my MBA to sleep. I'm hoping whatever's there, is still there in a cache.

Does anyone know where to find said cache? I've tried the usual autosave, and it's not there, nor does there seem to be an autosave preference in TextEdit anymore for Yosemite.

What things can I try? I'm very, very desperate to get this document back. I'll even try paying for data recovery utilities.

It's still there. I cannot reveal it in Finder.

 

[jbarley]

which version of OS X are you using, I ask because I'm running the latest Yosemite 10.10.3 and just created a test file in TextEdit to see if I could create your situation, and my save dialog has no "Don't Save button" showing anywhere, just" Cancel" and "Save".

Have you tried a Spotlight search for this errant file (Untitled 2)?

 

[Macguy97]

Have you tried a Spotlight search for this errant file (Untitled 2)?

Yes! Unfortunately… :'(

This feels like the biggest oversight. Over my years of owning Macs, one of my biggest losses of data comes from accidentally clicking Don't Save -other than failing HDDs.

Seriously, you'd think that hitting Don't Save would keep the autosaved document, at least as a system hidden file, or even move it to trash.

I'd love it if someone wrote me an extension that actually transformed the Don't Save button either to have a warning pop-up, or to rewrite it's functionality to trash the file instead.

Really quite disappointed.

 

[Fishrrman]

This is why I don't trust the concept of "auto save" and actually disable it when possible.

-I- want to be the one controlling whether a file gets saved or not.

When I do it this way, I accept that I am the one responsible for storing and saving my documents. And I behave accordingly.

I've learned to hit "command-S" at regular intervals, many MANY times if I'm making numerous changes.

If I need to "preserve an older copy", I'll use "save as...".

 

[Macguy97]

I really don't quite understand how Don't Save seems to equate to a 35 pass wipe in computing.

How is it just gone?

 

[simonsi]

Look in your iCloud Drive TextEdit folder, even before you choose to save a TE doc in iCloud it will create a version there ready for handoff purposes.

Check, you <may> find the file there, if so copy it to your Desktop and see if you can open it there. As you hadn't saved it, if there it is probably called "untitled" or something...

 

[Macguy97]

Look in your iCloud Drive TextEdit folder, even before you choose to save a TE doc in iCloud it will create a version there ready for handoff purposes.

Check, you <may> find the file there, if so copy it to your Desktop and see if you can open it there. As you hadn't saved it, if there it is probably called "untitled" or something...

I thought I saw something there, but it failed to upload and then disappeared. Yay.

 

[simonsi]

I thought I saw something there, but it failed to upload and then disappeared. Yay.

Ugh, that temp file gets removed either when you save the file as a named iCloud file, or when you elect to save it not in iCloud. I'm not aware of any way to recover it once it has gone - if you have another iDevice you could see if Textedit will open the file from the device side maybe...if not then I'm out of ideas.