TechNote (Archived)

InDesign document recovery (InDesign CS2)

What's covered

InDesign mini-saves

Automatic recovery on startup

The InDesign Recovery folder

Messages during automatic recovery

If an application shuts down unexpectedly due to hardware or software conflicts, system errors, power outages, or other problems, then any unsaved changes you've made to documents open in that application may be lost. To prevent this type of data loss, Adobe InDesign includes an automatic document recovery feature that can retrieve unsaved changes. Automatic recovery is permanently enabled to guard against unexpected system failures.

InDesign mini-saves

While you make changes to an InDesign document, InDesign performs a mini-save of the changes once every minute. InDesign stores these changes in temporary files in the InDesign Recovery folder, adds the changes to the document, and then deletes the temporary files when you choose File > Save. If InDesign shuts down unexpectedly, InDesign attempts to use these temporary files to recover unsaved changes to the document.

Automatic recovery on startup

The first time you start InDesign after it shut down unexpectedly, it begins the document recovery process automatically. It checks the InDesign Recovery folder for information on documents that were open when it shut down, and then attempts to open each of these documents and incorporate any mini-saved data into them.

If InDesign successfully opens a document and incorporates mini-saved data into a document, it includes "[Recovered]" in the document's name (for example, "My File [Recovered]"). The first time you choose File > Save or File > Save As in a recovered document, InDesign asks whether you want to overwrite the original document. If you click Yes, InDesign overwrites the original to incorporate the recovered information, and it removes [Recovered] from the document's name.

The InDesign Recovery folder

This section describes the contents and locations of the InDesign Recovery folder.

Folder contents

-- dbt [random alphanumeric character]: A temporary file with mini-saved information for every open InDesign document. The names of these temporary files always begin with "dbt" and, on Windows, end with "tmp."

-- Default settings: A temporary file that stores default settings. It is the first temp file listed when you view the contents of the InDesign Recovery folder by name.

-- RecoveryData: An index for all open InDesign documents and crashed documents, including their complete path names. The list of open documents contains paths not aliases, which means InDesign is not able to recover files you move or rename after a crash.

Note: If you take the document in need of recovery to another system and open it there, InDesign will be unable to search the RecoveryData file and you will lose the opportunity to recover data that may be been stored before the crash. Therefore, it is recommended you recover documents immediately after a crash by starting InDesign and saving any recovered documents.

-- ProtectiveShutdownLog: A log file generated if InDesign crashes due to an access violation. You can open this file in a text editor (for example, Wordpad) to view the time, date, error, and plug-ins that were loaded in InDesign when the crash occurred. This log file is helpful for identifying a specific plug-in that may have caused the error.

Folder locations

Each user account has a separate InDesign Recovery folder. If InDesign cannot locate the InDesign Recovery folder during startup, it re-creates the folder.

-- On Mac OS X: Users/[User]/ Library/Preferences/Adobe InDesign/Version 4.0/ InDesign Recovery

-- On Windows XP: Documents and Settings/[User]/Application Data/Adobe/InDesign/Version 4.0/InDesign Recovery

-- On Windows 2000: Documents and Settings/[User]/Application Data/Adobe/InDesign/Version 4.0/InDesign Recovery

Messages during automatic recovery

If InDesign is able to recover documents, you need do nothing. When trying to open a recovered document that is damaged to the point that it is unopenable, InDesign may simply quit unexpectedly without displaying a message. If InDesign encounters a problem while trying to recover documents, you may receive one of the following messages:

General application message

-- "Do you want to start automatic recovery?"

This message indicates that one or more of the documents requiring recovery are damaged (even though there is no mention of damage).

File-specific messages

-- "[File name] could not be found. Do you want to postpone it's recovery?"

This message indicates that InDesign could not locate the document because it has been deleted, moved, or renamed. Or, the volume (server) on which the document is located may be currently unavailable.

-- "[File name] could not be recovered because it had been changed."

This message indicates that the document has already been recovered and saved over a network, so the contents of the document no longer match the local file that contains the mini-saved information.

-- "Cannot open 'unknown document.' Database error information not available."

This message indicates that the document's temporary file is damaged or cannot be found. You may still open the last saved version of the document.

-- "[File name] is damaged beyond any possibility of recovery."

This message indicates that the InDesign document is unrecoverable because it is damaged.

-- "[File name] may be damaged. Do you want to open it anyway?

This message indicates inconsistencies in the document that could cause a crash. If you select to open the document, copy and paste its contents into a new document.

Recovery choice messages

After you receive a recovery message, InDesign asks you how to proceed. Under most circumstances, you can click Yes, No, or Cancel as follows:

-- Click Yes to continue the recovery of the remaining documents, but to leave the document listed in the alert on the list of documents in the RecoveryData file. InDesign will try to recover this document again the next time you start.

-- Click No to continue the recovery of the remaining documents but remove the document listed in the alert from the list of documents in the RecoveryData file. InDesign will not try to recover this file again.

-- Click Cancel to stop the recovery process for all documents. The next time you start InDesign, it will try to recover all documents again.

Note: If the document can be opened, you can also choose File > Revert to revert to the last saved version of the document. Choosing the Revert command discards the mini-saved file.