All desktop files and folders have gone

[kyle1988]

Please help.

Im running OSX Yosemite on IMAC 21.5 late 2012

Just finished a camtasia recording and shared it to the desktop. All files and folders vanished. I relaunched finder and they did not reappear. I started the machine various times and again they did not appear. Some odd things did appear in my trash however. See all attached.









Have some backed up but some pretty important stuff was in one folder and hadnt backed up in a week. Surely everything hasnt just vanished?

 

[kyle1988]

Just attempted this but did not work....

Not sure what to do? Used a recovery programme but it couldn't find anything.

 

[MacInWin]

In Finder, go to the folder named Desktop. Anything in there? You can also try Finder, on the top menu click on Go/Go to Folder and enter "/Users/<your username>/Desktop" to get to the Desktop folder. Anything there? I don't know camtasia, but did the video you created get saved anywhere? Have you looked in the folders in the trash to see what's in there?

 

[kyle1988]

Yes nothing in there.

In trash I have the below....

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The video file saved to the desktop. Now everything is gone on the desktop.

 

[usagora]

Are you positive these files and folders on the desktop were there before you made the Camtasia recording and shared it? Or did you just notice they weren't there after going to locate the video file you had shared? I'm not sure how sharing (i.e. exporting) a file to the desktop could cause all the other files and folders there to disappear. Did the shared Camtasia recording show up on the desktop?

Have you tried searching your hard drive using CMD + F for any folders or file names that you remember?

 

[MacInWin]

Have you looked in the "recovered" folders to see what is in them? Are any of the identified files from the desktop?

 

[kyle1988]

Yes that doesnt work. One I had just edited called PA profits doesnt show up and neither do any of the files that were on there...



Four folders were defintely there with everything inside and after I exported the video file everything vanished. When I go to excel and 'open recent' I get the below:



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Yes they show the terminal file and I open it and get the message above in the OP.

 

[MacInWin]

Excell is not smart enough to go looking for files other than where it was last saved, do that message is to be expected. You didn't seem to answer the question about looking in the folders in the trash, or did I miss that? Why use terminal? What you typed in was seen by the OS as a command to execute the named file, which it didn't because it's not an executable. Are you really familiar with the terminal commands? If not, I suggest you leave terminal alone.

 

[usagora]

As Jake asked, have you actually opened the folders in the trash to see what is in them?

Yet another reason to always run hourly Time Machine backups of all your files. Just set it and forget it.

 

[kyle1988]

When I go to the folders in trash they have terminal files inside...







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I ran a disk utility and it said Hard Drive was fine....I don't understand how everything just vanished...I thought backing up weekly was enough and in 14 years of using mac ive never had this.

 

[MacInWin]

Nope, I'm betting that wkresources is part of the name of a missing file, right? The reason it looks like a terminal command to the OS is that it has lost all the metadata, so it defaults to executable. But it's not, of course. You might see what the system does if you try to "put back" that file. Once it's put back to wherever it's going, find it and see if you can launch Excel, point to it and open it. That may re-associate it with Excel, if it is an Excel file.

 

[MacInWin]

Your streak lasted 14 years, mine was closer to 25. And I lost both the drive AND the backup at the same time. Now I have two backups made twice daily. When I was using this as a work machine, TM backed up every hour.

As the old saying goes, there are two kinds of users--those who have lost a drive and those who will. Welcome to the "lost" side. Sorry about that.

 

[kyle1988]

I can't locate the file to put it back. Ive searched everywhere and the imac believes it doesnt exist.....It sucks though man as everything in docs etc is fine. Don't know how all the desktop file can simply vanish. Frustrating.

 

[MacInWin]

Open the trash. Right click the folder(s). Click "put back." See what happens.

 

[kyle1988]

It puts them onto the desktop. Then I try and open a recent doc in excel and get the same message. Just used disk drill to recover desktop lost data and it says nothing is there.

 

[usagora]

Nope, I'm betting that wkresources is part of the name of a missing file, right? The reason it looks like a terminal command to the OS is that it has lost all the metadata, so it defaults to executable. But it's not, of course. You might see what the system does if you try to "put back" that file. Once it's put back to wherever it's going, find it and see if you can launch Excel, point to it and open it. That may re-associate it with Excel, if it is an Excel file.

Or be sure Finder > Preferences > Advanced > Show all filename extensions is checked and then just modify the file extensions of these files to .xlsx, etc.

 

[MacInWin]

Forget the "recent" function. All the recovered files have been renamed, probably. You will need to click on the file once, then select Open with to get to Excel. Or open Excel, find one of the files from the Open menu and see if Excel can open it anyway. From there, if you can identify what it is, you can do Save As to give it the right name again.

EDIT: Not surprised about Disk Drill results. The files aren't really "missing" in that sense. They probably are all in the recovered folders, just misnamed and mis-associated.

 

[usagora]

It puts them onto the desktop. Then I try and open a recent doc in excel and get the same message. Just used disk drill to recover desktop lost data and it says nothing is there.

Excel's recent file list is going to look for that file in the last known location. Change the file extension to .xlsx as I described above and then open the file directly.

 

[MacInWin]

And as for the "why" this happened, that's hard to tell. My first guess would be that Camtasia mucked up the directory on the drive, which made the files "disappear" from view. Then you did the reboot, drive test, etc, etc, that got the files "recovered" but all the metadata gone about what opens with what. And nothing is where any application thinks it last was, so "recent" is useless in this case. You are going to have to examine every file in every recovered folder that was in Trash. PITA, but there you go.

 

[kyle1988]

Tried that and it just said this....



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There are only 7 in trash.

Each with this inside...



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I get this....