Forum Discussion
How to recovery an older version of a .story file?
Hello everyone,
I wanted to create a new project by using a .story file I already have (both projects have a lot of common points).
So, I deleted a lot of slides in the .story file I already have and instead of clicking on "save as" (to create a new file), I clicked on "save"...
What can I do to find again my file first version ? (I already looked in the temp folder and in "Previous versions" in the file properties)
Thank you in advance for your help,
Claire
25 Replies
Hi there, Claire. Ugh, that's the worst. When you say that you already looked in the temp folder, I'm assuming you did so with these steps:
1) Open this folder in Windows Explorer: %appdata%\Articulate\Storyline
2) Scan the contents of this folder for a file that starts with the name of your project. If you find one, copy it to your desktop. If you find more than one, copy the latest version to your desktop.
3) Change the file extension of the copy on your desktop from *.tmp to *.story.
4) Double-click the file to open it in Storyline.Did you have any luck using the undo button in Storyline to get to the point before making those deletes? This question might be moot if you had already closed the file. I'm not sure that there's much else you can do outside of those steps.
Yes, it's what I did but nothing worked. Thank you anyway for your answer :-)
Thanks for this! A robocopy file backup overwrote my project. Saved me weeks of work!
and six years later you are saving my whole life!!! Thank you Crystal.
Ugh - sorry to hear that Claire! Crystal's answer is typically how we're able to track down files that are corrupt or otherwise inaccessible due to a hiccup in Storyline, but it sounds like you were overwriting the existing file? If so - there isn't a saved copy of it, although the "undo" button could help slightly.
In case it helps anybody, the best practice seems to be to use file explorer to make a copy of the old file and rename it. Then work on the new file.
The guiding principle: storage space is cheap, and the only people who think they have too many copies of a file are those who have never lost a file. Always make lots of backups, because this is not the only way you can lose all your work.
Thank you Crystal! Your method worked for me too. Phew. Thanks so much.
Glad to hear that, Megan! If you need any other help, let us know.
Thank you Crystal. You're a life saver
So glad that this conversation was able to help you out as well, Aine.
Thanks for popping in to share :)
I recently lost a file and am on a tight deadline. I would have hated to have to draft the project over from scratch. This was a real time saver. Thanks Crystal.
So glad you were able to find what you needed, Talia :) Thanks for popping in to share.
Hi, I have similar issue and can find/change the .tmp to .story but then get message saying file might be corrupt or created in older version of Storyline. Is there anything i can do?
