Recovering Working Files Lost When Acrobat DC Crashes

[jeffreyg17090753]

For any number of reasons Acrobat DC crashes without warning. When such crashes occur the following is expected, but never occurs:

(1) Reopening Adobe DC should restore the crashed files to their last saved state. (This rarely (if ever) occurs and is entirely dependent on how the crash occurs.

(2) The "Recent" "File Lists" appears when Acrobat first opens after a crash should list all of the previously opened files. Acrobat DC fails to do this when needed - ever.

(3) Files loaded into Acrobat DC from the web are never recovered or restored to the working interface nor are they listed in the "Recents" "File Lists" table.

I find this infuriating.

Depending on how files are loaded from the web into Acrobat (in the case of a Mac running Safari (OS version agnostic)) a copy of your file might be saved either in the Mac's "Downloads" folder (unless directed elsewhere) before being vectored and opened in Acrobat DC -or- in the case of "viewing" a pdf from the web, the file is redirected and cached into the following folder:

/private/var/folders/qb/74tg814x7sj24t2ymh9dmxhh0000gn/T/WebKitPDFs-7s2mxw/

The file is cached (presumably by the System) in this location in whatever web server filename it is given. (E.g. On Pacer, pdf files are generated from a perl script so they appear as "show_temp.pl.pdf" until you open subsequent web pdf files for viewing. Subsequent Pacer generated pdf's might bear a random prefix such as "ZcHqYF-show_temp.pl.pdf". Other web servers will name their pdf's whatever the webmaster decides. The point is web viewed files will stack up in the cache directory and remain persistently whether Acrobat is open, quit, or forced closed; and whether the file is allowed to remain open in Acrobat or closed. I suspect, however, the cache is cleared between system boots or aged out after a certain period of time.

How difficult is it for Adobe to write a few lines of code that (1) determines the location of every file opened in Acrobat; (2) makes a copy of each file stored in the obscure cache folder into either a /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/RECOVERY folder, or better, a /Users/<username>/Documents/Adobe/Acrobat/ViewFiles/ directory the instant the file is loaded into Acrobat from the System cached folder location; and (3) Update the "Recent" "File Lists" with pointers to the files so when (not "if") Acrobat crashes, it can actually (and reliably) restore our work from our last saved iterations?

Reasoning with Adobe Support seems akin to talking to a post (or a fire hydrant if you prefer). Support agents are not developers, work from canned knowledge bases, and do not seem tasked or motivated to escalate customer issues up the lines. Maybe I'm all wet here, and there are actual solutions I have yet to learn or discover solving the above listed issues. In which case, I'm all ears.

[mariahk89097669]

This is an excellent written point. Of course the reason I'm looking at the Forum is because I lost all of my notations on a document due to a force close. This is an extremely frustrating circumstance. I will look with hope and finding that something by the grace of God was Auto saved thank you for the advice

[jeffreyg17090753]

Thanks!

I suspect we are not the only people with the issue. It happened frequently before I replaced my Late 2013 MBPro Retina with the new 2017 MBPro and persists to this very day. I even reinstalled Acrobat DC from scratch; so (1) it‘s not the hardware (which is now substantially improved; and (2) it‘s not because of old “restored” Adobe artifacts because I gutted all traces of and references to Adobe before reinstalling - essentially a clean install.

I assume, but have to ask if you were working on a Mac when Acrobat crashed? If so, were you able to find your files in the locations I designated above?

I’m assuming that no one from Adobe is going to weigh in until more people come forward. Apparently only squeaky wheels get Adobe oil despite the obvious common sense reasons to implement fault mitigation.

Adobe Support was less than supportive and was only capable of parroting the Company’s party line. If I said it before, it bears repeating.

Cheers!

[angelah34385778]

Well, it's now March 2018, I have just downloaded a FRESH version of all Adobe programs on a brand new, fresh PC, and this is the very first time I've ever (ever, ever) had this disaster of a situation happen to me as well! I am so F#$%*#% upset right now, as well, you'll probably be able to see this post is coming through at 3:35 AM, and I am (see above F'd) right now. SERIOUSLY ADOBE?!

So I guess now I should just remove the entire suite, and reinstall? Or what? I have no time for this, just like you all above. And, since you're working with Mac's, I can't really utilize your suggestion to even try to help me find anything lost. What, again, ADOBE?!

Guess I'll go work on this ridiculous document in "Word" and transfer it over. F!!!

Will someone from Adobe PLEASE help us with this? I cannot find any other writeups or responses regarding this question elsewhere. Thanks.

[riddleys21212259]

unfortunately the answer is still no and i don't know why they still don't implement such feature that the document will be autosaved everytime you scan a form. I have scanned 6 pages after the 6 page being scanned adobe acrobat DC crashed and as you can guess all time being spend to scan the documents are gone.

There is no file anywhere even no cached file with the contents of the scanned forms so i can continue my work.

What i did then is scan a document and after every scan i saved the PDF on the local machine that i use to save the document.

Then when Adobe acrobat DC crashed again i could reopen my saved document and could scan the last document again en after save the PDF again on the local machine.

It is a bit of work and yes adobe should make an autosave feature in their product because then the extra work to get a full scanned document being saved into a PDF will no longer be necessary.

[thebundok]

Was coming here for hope and leaving feeling more frustrated than ever.

Just finished scanning (via flatbed) over 100 pages of various sized materials. Upon clicking the button to finish the scan (no more pages) is when Acrobat DC crashed, taking with it over 3 hours of work. AutoSave is set to every 5 minutes yet in the process of scanning multiple pages there is no opportunity to save.

No temporary files, no recovery files, nothing. Just 3 hours of my life, gone.

As @angelah34385778 put it, "I am so F#$%*#% upset right now."

[lynne32084284]

And I have lost three looong days of grueling edits. : (

[terryh35905000]

It never occurred to me that there would be no file recovery with Adobe....and so I, too, have lost 3 days of intensive editing on a dissertation document due to some anomalous crash ....about 77 miles of hard road, that. But to lose it because Adobe doesn't have this simplest of autosave tools, and I'm paying $39 a month for this?... If I survive, I'll be deleting this program forever.

[try67]

You didn't save your file once in 3 days??? You didn't make a single backup copy of this important file during that entire time?

Sorry, but you have no one to blame but yourself, if that's the case.

And Acrobat does have a feature to automatically save a file every X minutes (to a temporary file), by the way. You can find it under Edit - Preferences - Documents.

[terryh35905000]

Thanks. I have found under preferences-documents that document changes are saved to a temporary file every 5 minutes, just as you said.

Please tell me where to find temporary files.

Terry

[try67]

It might be under the user temp folder, which will depend on your version of Acrobat and OS. If you're on a Windows machine and have a relatively new version it should be under:

C:/Users/<YOUR USER NAME>/AppData/Local/Temp/Adobe/Acrobat/<VERSION NUMBER>/

It might not be an actual PDF file, though, but some other format.

However, if such a file exists then Acrobat should ask you whether you want to recover it when you re-open it.

[terryh35905000]

It did ask -- a window popped up and asked me if I wanted to recover upon

reopen. I clicked Yes of course. However, that blanked off too and when I

reopened the file it was not a recovered version, and there was no

recovered file listed in the acrobat dc list or recent opens. I know it is

my fault for not saving last night, but lordamercy this is a hard

thing...even Word provides a recovered doc every time. I'm just surprised

that this expensive Adobe program doesn't.

terry

[ private informations removed by moderator ]

[tamiep]

I just had the same think happen in acrobat. This is the crap that would happen in the '80s! Are you telling me that they have not figured out how to add an autosave, yet? Even free apps like google drive have autosave for crying out loud! They make enough money, don't they? This is an important feature.