My music got deleted
Hi,
I’m a 16 year old composer and I was supposed to have an orchestra piece debuted in a few days that I wrote on MuseScore. When I went to work on the piece today, majority of it was deleted, only a few measures left behind. I need this music back. I entered "~/Library/Application Support/MuseScore/MuseScore3/“ in my files to see if it was there but it wasn’t. I went through all of the files. What do I do? I need this music back asap.
Comments
Hello! The good news is, MuseScore never ever deletes anything of yours. if you saved a score, it is absolutely still right there in the same location you saved it to. The trick will be remembering where you saved in. The folder you mentioned would not be a normal place to save to - that's an internal folder only used for crash recovery. If that's what happened, then you might indeed have a recovered file there. But otherwise, the file is definitely still in the folder you saved it to, wherever that is. The file you opened today must be an older version you saved somewhere else.
Since you are apparently on macOS, I recommend using Finder to find all files ending in ".mscz. Be sure to have it search hidden files and folders in case you accidentally put it somewhere hidden. Also, there is a known issue where if you're using Google Drive, it sometimes marks MuseScore files as hidden for some reason.
In reply to Hello! The good news is,… by Marc Sabatella
I don't recall saving it to any folders. You're right, it is an old version of my score, I see lots of unchanged edits that I had changed I while ago. I'm not sure where it would be in my finder. I'm also not sure if I ever did save it, what I would do is once I was finished working on it for the day, I'd simply just close my laptop and pick up where I left off the next day.
In reply to I don't recall saving it to… by qzzyksxd8m
Every file you ever save is in a folder, thats's how your computer's drive is organized. So assuming you did save it, Finder will help you find it. For more information on how to use Finder, consult your macOS documentation, or just do some web searches.
If you never saved it, though, that would be bad. Computer programs are not like mobile apps - they almost always work with files that you saved explicitly to your computer's drive. Work not saved goes away when you close the program. Merely closing the laptop doesn't close the program, but apparently, you must have done that at some point, or else the compurer itself may have restarted. Always always always save work in pretty much any computer program.
In reply to Every file you ever save is… by Marc Sabatella
Hey so I rewrote most of my score after realizing I wouldn't get a back. So today after I was done working on it, I saved it by hitting "command+s" and then I restarted the software because it was getting buggy. When I opened it again moments later, the only version of my score saved was an old version, the same that I started with last time it got deleted. Where is my music?
In reply to Hey so I rewrote most of my… by qzzyksxd8m
In the folder you saved it to. Do you remember the exact name of that folder?
When you say you opened "it" again, you apparently chose an older version of the file. If for some reason you aren't seeing it in the list of recent files, then you need to find the copy you saved most recently, by navigating directly to the folder you saved it to.
In reply to In the folder you saved it… by Marc Sabatella
I didn't save it to a folder. All I did was hit command+s on my laptop to save the score and I restarted musescore. And to reopen the score, I went to the "start center" but the only version of my score that was there was the old version. Everything that I've rewritten over the past few days is gone.
In reply to I didn't save it to a folder… by qzzyksxd8m
Every single thing you have ever saved on that computer is a folder - that's how computers work. So, if you saved it, your work is absolutely postibviely without even the slightest possibility of doubt still there (in the file within the folder you actually saved it to*. You just need to learn how to keep track of where your files are.
The very first time you pressed Cmd+X to save, it asked you for a folder. If you can't remember what folder you chose, probably you simply went with whatever the default was, which would generally be the same as the last time score you saved before that. So, try creating a new score, hitting Cmd+S to save it, and this time pay attention to the default folder that is offered. That's probably where you saved your previous score as well.
I would definitely recommend reading up on the basics of computer use - how files and folders work. it's the same on all operating systems, but probably it would be easiest to understand an article written specifically from the perspective of macOS.