Issues with files saving
I was working on a piece today, and I was saving it every 5 minutes or so as I was working. I then quit musescore to do something else. A few hours later I came back to continue working on the project, but when I opened musescore, the project was completely gone. There was an older version of it under a really weird file name "scYnejxn," which is definitely not what the file was originally named. Furthermore, all of the work I did earlier was almost completely reverted to what it was before I started. I went to check on some of my other files, and many of them also had similarly weird file names. I've been searching through both musescore and my computer's files for about an hour now, and I haven't been able to find it anywhere.
Some additional information that may be relevant: the project I was working on was quite big, and very laggy, I don't know if this had anything to do with the issue, but who knows. The project also had a lot of instruments in it, again, I don't know how helpful this is. I've also seen the weird name things happen before, but I've mostly ignored it because it was only the blank score that it starts you with upon opening the app. This was on version 3.0.4.21117. I don't know if there are any issues with this version, but it seemed prudent to include this here.
Comments
I think I found what the issue might be. I tried opening the weirdly named file, then saving it using the "save as" feature, and then changing the name to "find me 2" and changing nothing else about the menu. Once I saved it and tried to find it, it was similarly completely gone. I set it to save in the MuseScore3 scores folder, but it wasn't there when I checked. The weirdly named file also wasn't there, and I can only access it from the start center. When I did this test, it was on the most recent version of MuseScore, as I tried updating it to see if that would help at all, and it didn't.
In reply to I think I found what the… by MOOSEWHISKER
The weirdly named file is a backup file, which doesn't save the progress of your latest edit. The file is useful when a save causes the score to corrupt or MuseScore to crash, because then you can retrieve the non-problematic score through the backup file to rescue your progress before.
The only reason of the normally named score disappearing I know is the file navigator isn't properly refreshed. But since you've been searching for an hour, this is probably not your case. So what happens if you start a new score, save, exit MuseScore, reopen, do some edits and save? Does that give you more information of where the score is saved? Or could you upload the backup file here?
In reply to The weirdly named file is a… by Howard-C
I think that this is what happened, but now I don't know what the original name of the file was, is there a way to find that?
Nevermind, I figured it out. I had to go into my computers application support (on MacOS X Sierra). You can go there by clicking on you desktop, then at the top of your screen, going selecting the "Go" drop down menu. From there select the "go to folder" option. Type in "~/Library/Application Support/MuseScore/MuseScore3" and all of the backups were there.
In reply to Nevermind, I figured it out… by MOOSEWHISKER
If you were saving it every 5 minutes and not using save as you should have one file that is up to date. Neither Mac OS or MuseScore will delete a score on its own. If you didn't open a bunch of other scores while you were working on it, it should also be in your recent file list so there should be no need to go through the operating system to find a file.