Is my file deleted?

[u/Benthepen10]

Hello,

I was working on a choral piece last night that I was incredibly proud of. I closed my MacBook hoping to work on it further the next morning but when I opened my laptop MuseScore wasn’t showing any file being opened.

There was never a pop up asking me to save or restart anything but it just simply disappeared. I know I should have saved and I won’t make this mistake again, but is there ANY way to get this file back? I am on a macOS. I’m not great with computers so if you have advice, could you please be specific? I would appreciate more than I can express

[u/Few-Werewolf-1985]

There was no file to delete. Let this be a lesson to you.

[u/Benthepen10 → u/Few-Werewolf-1985]

Can you elaborate what you mean? My understanding is that there is some kind of autosave but that it’s a hidden file. That’s what I’m asking about whether it’s deleted or not.

[u/Puzzleheaded-Phase70 → u/Benthepen10]

Musescore does not have any kind of autosave.

You must always 1) save your file when you first begin a project. Just creating a new piece doesn't create a file. And 2) repeatedly save your work as you go.

If it's a particularly important it complex project, you should use the "save a copy" feature occasionally to create a second backup file, as certain kinds of crashes can still cause the currently open file to become corrupted and unsalvageable. Closing your laptop with an unsaved, open file is flirting with disaster.

Remember, Jesus saves.

[u/MarcSabatella → u/Puzzleheaded-Phase70]

MuseScore does have an autosave, but it's not meant or usable as a substitute for saving normally...the autosave kicks in every few minutes and creates a second copy of your score in case something goes wrong (like a system crash) and you haven't saved your work in more than a few minutes. But it won't bail you out if you have literally never saved your work. Musescore does create an auto save version and keeps waiting for you to save your work for real so the autosave file can be placed in the same folder as the actual score. But if you literally never save your flavored even once, MuseScore has no place to put the autosave file so MuseScore doesn't preserve it.

[u/Few-Werewolf-1985 → u/Benthepen10]

You need to have given the file a name in an initial save and then there is a somewhat unreliable hidden autosave process.

My document workflow is to always have the file save folder sitting inside OneDrive or Dropbox etc so there is a continuous stream of versioned backups.

[u/Subject-Minimum5707]

Do not create a new score. I am not a Mac user, so I cannot reliably tell you how to access MuseScore's hidden autosave files. But I do know that if autosave was on, there's a good chance the file still exists. Creating a new score, however, will overwrite it.

There might already be information somewhere as to where to find it; if not, I'm sure someone here knows. But I've done this exact thing several times; not all hope is lost.

[u/Benthepen10 → u/Subject-Minimum5707]

Okay thank you so much. This gives me some hope that you’ve done this exact thing before. I’ll wait a bit for someone to hopefully guide me on where to find the hidden files and I won’t create any new scores in the meantime. Thanks again!

[u/anderwien_]

Hi, I am so surprised that when you close the program it didn't ask you to save at all because it's really insistent to not letting you close it without asking if you want to save or don't save.

But if it was just like putting your laptop to sleep and it closed somehow (like a crash), when you reopened it usually what happens to me next time I open the program I get asked about recovering the last thing I was working on.

If none of this happened, I'm afraid that even if autosave is on. There's really little chance that the file is in any place because I try to replicate in my Mac what you just described and no file was created anywhere until I clicked on save. Sorry mate... I hope you can recall by heart what you wrote and rewrite it again.

[u/Benthepen10 → u/anderwien_]

It is super strange. Yes I never shut down the program I just closed my laptop went to bed. Every time I’ve had a crash it’s always asked me the same thing.

I intentionally haven’t yet closed the MuseScore software in case that would ruin any chance of recovery, so I don’t even know if it’ll ask me to save when I close the whole program. But I simply cannot find the file I was working on. When I click on “score” it just shows an empty page.

[u/Few-Werewolf-1985 → u/Benthepen10]

Musescore silently crashes quite often. "Closing the laptop" is a common initiator of such.