Folder on desktop disappeared and no longer exists!

P

piggywillow

Registered
Hi all,

I was working in Word and tried to save it to a particular folder on my desktop, when it slowed down and became unresponsive. I tried to exit Word and eventually it started to work again so I thought all was fine. I tried to save again to make sure it was correct, and I received an error saying it couldn't be saved there. I went to my desktop, and the folder was gone. Disappeared. It wasn't in Trash. It didn't accidentally get dragged into another folder. It simply disappeared! Spotlight can't find the folder or any of its files.

I went to the tech center where I work and they were perplexed as well. I'll have to resort to my last backup, which was about a month ago.

So: what happened? Is this a Lion bug or something? I'm so confused, and really sad that I lost all my work....

-Piggywillow
 
piggywillow said:
So: what happened? Is this a Lion bug or something? I'm so confused, and really sad that I lost all my work....

-Piggywillow
Click to expand...
Excuse me if I'm wrong but isn't 'Word' a Microsoft windows product?
If so why would you even consider it a 'Lion' bug?
 
jbarley said:
Excuse me if I'm wrong but isn't 'Word' a Microsoft windows product?
If so why would you even consider it a 'Lion' bug?
Click to expand...

I think he was referring to the folder disappearing as a Lion bug. However i have never seen, heard or read of this happening and the only reason i can come up with is user error. I have experienced a situation where MS Office 2004 would not save my files to the location i specified spite MS saying it saved successfully it was no where to be found and since in this case the version of MS Office is not specified it could be with office itself however not saving a file and erasing a entire folder are completely different situations.
 
Last edited:
piggywillow said:
...

So: what happened? Is this a Lion bug or something? I'm so confused, and really sad that I lost all my work....

-Piggywillow
Click to expand...
You have not given enough information about the folder for anyone to say anything about it. It sounds like the folder may have been in fact an alias to a folder on a network volume. This, we do know. A folder on your hard drive will not just disappear on its own.

It may very well be that you inadvertently moved the folder. Do a Spotlight search for the folder and for the file that you tried to store there.
 
jbarley said:
Excuse me if I'm wrong but isn't 'Word' a Microsoft windows product?
If so why would you even consider it a 'Lion' bug?
Click to expand...


Because in the 10+ years I've been using Word, this has never happened on any machine, Mac or PC, before the Lion upgrade. Because since I've gotten the upgrade, many programs freeze and/or become unresponsive to typing or using the trackpad.
 
NuMackUsr said:
I think he was referring to the folder disappearing as a Lion bug. However i have never seen, heard or read of this happening and the only reason i can come up with is user error. I have experienced a situation where MS Office 2004 would not save my files to the location i specified spite MS saying it saved successfully it was no where to be found and since in this case the version of MS Office is not specified it could be with office itself however not saving a file and erasing a entire folder are completely different situations.
Click to expand...

Hi, thanks. I don't know what I could have done to make this happen; I was typing, it became unresponsive, it came back and the folder apparently was gone. I'm entirely perplexed.

My version of Word is "Word for Mac 2011, v. 14.1.4".
 
piggywillow said:
Because in the 10+ years I've been using Word, this has never happened on any machine, Mac or PC, before the Lion upgrade. Because since I've gotten the upgrade, many programs freeze and/or become unresponsive to typing or using the trackpad.
Click to expand...

I have never used Lion and never been a fan of MS Office. I was forced to use it on Panther in high school i am new to Leopard and its my first time being a true mac user as i just bought my first G4 mac weeks back i had a problem like this. except for me it wasn't a document or a folder but an entire flash drive wiped clean by plugging it in. Never happened again and never had it before.
 
piggywillow said:
Hi, thanks. I don't know what I could have done to make this happen; I was typing, it became unresponsive, it came back and the folder apparently was gone. I'm entirely perplexed.

My version of Word is "Word for Mac 2011, v. 14.1.4".
Click to expand...

This could vary well be a bug with office 2011. I can't Speak much about the causes as i have not used Microsoft Office with the exception of Office 2004.

The folder could somehow ended up hidden. Try setting the OS to view hidden files and folders.
 
piggywillow said:
Hi, thanks. I don't know what I could have done to make this happen; I was typing, it became unresponsive, it came back and the folder apparently was gone. I'm entirely perplexed.

My version of Word is "Word for Mac 2011, v. 14.1.4".
Click to expand...
No version of Word has ever been reported to make folders disappear. This will conceivably be possible in Mountain Lion, but you are running Lion. If you want help, then you need to share relevant information about the folder:
  • How was the folder created?
  • Was the folder always on your Desktop or did you move it there?
  • How old was the folder?
  • Of the files in the folder, did you have files saved directly to the folder, moved there from another location, or both?
  • This is not about the folder, but has the computer ever before been unresponsive like this?
  • If so, then what happened?
 
The same has just happened to me.

I have been using Apple Macs since 1987 and so don't consider my self to be a newbie.

I was working in After Affects which crashed - I restarted the Mac and when I looked the one folder that had the project files / footage / images had completely disappeared destroying 2 days work. I am now in the process of using Disk Drill to try and find the missing files.

Believe me this is a genuine problem - and definitely not user error!
 
I created the folder on monday morning - right clicking on desktop and creating one.
The folder was always there for two days.
Some files were saved directly and others dragged and dropped there from other sources.
After Effects slowed and crashed whilst using a Plugin called Plexus.
I restarted the computer and the folder had just completely disapeared.

What is even more peculiar is this fact - I have been unable to recover anything from that folder. What I did recover where the Auto-saves of the project - which must be held somewhere else on the drive.
 
Two questions:
  1. Do you leave the folder on the Desktop where you created it?
  2. Was your Desktop on your boot drive/partition?
 
The more obvious question here would be,
seeing as you say the folder has been around for at least 2 days, do you have a backup?
Or would that just make things too easy?
 
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