Yes, this has nothing to do with screenwriting.

Yeah, this is easy to explain, but I get depressed thinking about it.

Ok. I was writing for the 7WC. Final Draft when into Auto-save. Froze in Auto-save. Shut itself down. When I open it back up, to go back to writing, it says "File not found." So, I search the folder. The file's gone. I do a search of the whole computer. I find a... almost like a shortcut of a shortcut. Then, I click on it. It comes up saying: "Missing Shortcut. Windows is searching for the file. To locate the file yourself, click Browse." But, there's no file to find. Then, it says, "The item that this shortcut refers to has been changed or moved, so this shortcut no longer works properly. Do you want to delete this shortcut?"

So, is my story gone completely or can it be recovered? If so, how? If not, I'm sure as fuck not going to restart it. I'd probably quit after this.

-Sean

Take the file link you are clicking on and use a file converter to see if you can open it up that way.  OR, try taking the file link and opening it up in notepad.  It won't be formatted properly but it might have your text strokes available.

I'll check into it a bit more for you since I use Final Draft from time to time myself.

I'm not a computer expert by any stretch of the imagination but maybe you should check your Temp folders with your settings on "Show Hidden Files". I think some programs save into these Temp folders until you close the program so after a crash, they might well be there.

I hate the Final Draft I have. There's so many bugs that get on my nerves and I can't justify paying for an upgrade until after Christmas.

Quoted from Baltis. Take the file link you are clicking on and use a file converter to see if you can open it up that way.  OR, try taking the file link and opening it up in notepad.  It won't be formatted properly but it might have your text strokes available. I'll check into it a bit more for you since I use Final Draft from time to time myself.

Thanks, Balt. I checked into it, too. The only real advice I got from a quick check was, "File's gone? You're fucked."

I'll try it and do some more checking myself.

EDIT: Yeah, I should've figured it wouldn't work. The link I have isn't the file. It's a shortcut of the shortcut for the file. So fucking stupid, this problem. How does it freeze and delete a file? Really.

Quoted from Brian M I'm not a computer expert by any stretch of the imagination but maybe you should check your Temp folders with your settings on "Show Hidden Files". I think some programs save into these Temp folders until you close the program so after a crash, they might well be there. I hate the Final Draft I have. There's so many bugs that get on my nerves and I can't justify paying for an upgrade until after Christmas.

Me neither, Brian. Personally, I hate computers.

I'll give that a shot, too. I like Final Draft and this is my first problem with it. Hopefully, it's not a prelude of things to come.

Also, I tried System Restore, but I forgot that it doesn't alter your files, so I should've known that that wouldn't have recovered it anyway.

Take a look in your recycle bin.  You may have a copy lying around inside there.

Quoted from mcornetto Take a look in your recycle bin.  You may have a copy lying around inside there.

Empty. If only it were that simple.

No, by now, as it happened about an hour and a half ago, I'm over it.

I've accepted that it's gone.

Do a search on your drive for any file named *.fdr  (If you aren't using Final Draft 8 ).  This should turn up all the files that are final draft.  You may see your file in that list.

Very often those programs make automatic backups of files and they don't always have the same file name or extension. Sometimes you'll find an oddly named file in your directory that you can open in the program or even in notepad that will contain the text of the file which would save a lot of time in rewriting. Worked once for me. Check every file in the directory you were saving this file in to see. You might also check the FD program directories.

You can also do a search on your computer for a text within the file that you lost. It's time consuming, but worth a shot as well.

Yeah, but I'm guessing this file isn't in the directory he expects it's in.  Maybe it got saved somewhere strange.

Ok, here's where I'm at, now.

Haven't tried the last two suggestions yet. Downloaded "Recover my Files". It found the script and all my saves of it. They're there in .fdr format, but when I try and open them in Final Draft, it says, "Unexpected File Format" and shuts itself down.

So, I have it, but it's not reading. What do you think? Re-install FD or try and search the files for the original version of the script?

The script and all your saves of it?  Have you tried an earlier save of it rather than just the last save?  If you can't open any of then then do as Baltis suggest and open the file in notepad and you should at least be able to get the text - though it won't be formatted.  

I also would still search your disk for fdr files.

Quoted from mcornetto The script and all your saves of it?  Have you tried an earlier save of it rather than just the last save?  If you can't open any of then then do as Baltis suggest and open the file in notepad and you should at least be able to get the text - though it won't be formatted.   I also would still search your disk for fdr files.

Yeah, all the saves. But, they're the same problem. Won't open in FD.

Tried Notepad, as well. Came up as these damned weird symbols. Same for Word. Seen it and, didn't work.

The "Unexpected File Format" message sounds like it's trying to open the file with something other than FD.  Can you right click, select "open with", then choose FD from a list?

I had this problem very recently, the day before a very important deadline.

The fucker deleted my whole file.

Do you have any other hardrives attached? Or a pen drive?

It sometimes saves a little bit of the file onto something it's not supposed to. Put them all back in and search again.

For me it just suddenly decided to work again on about the third time I restarted my computer

I had this happen once with Final Draft 8. I closed the program and opened my documents and found it with all my other Final Draft files. I opened it from there and voilà, it was back.


Breanne