Vanished drafts – no autosave
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Hello,
Was working on a post yesterday through the afternoon on WordPress.com using WP-Admin, Blocks. Finished around 6, and went to save the post (was going to publish but needed to add something this morning), and the Save draft button seemed to have vanished, I decided to publish it instead as hopefully that would preserve it, but that was also impossible. I then closed it down figuring that it would have autosaved per usual, and discovered that it had saved nothing beyond 3.30 in the afternoon.
Weirdly if I look at my activity log, it shows two photos which were uploaded around 5, and says that they were saved to the draft, but if you look at the draft there’s no sign of them.
I had another go at restoring when I got home, and there are revisions autosaved from around 7.30 onwards, but a gaping hole in the middle with no sign of the finished draft.
Help! Post was Centenary Swann, may also appear as To celebrate, to commemorate : Donald Swann (it was around the time I changed the title that virtually the whole thing disappeared). Help!
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi @mj263 – we’re looking into this with you.
Post was Centenary Swann, may also appear as To celebrate, to commemorate : Donald Swann (it was around the time I changed the title that virtually the whole thing disappeared).
A couple of questions we would like some clarity around to help us out:
- From when you first created the draft, about how long until you gave the draft it’s first title? Was it at the very beginning?
- And after you gave the draft its first title, how long was it before you changed the title (and things disappeared)?
If you can help us understand the timing of these two things that would be most helpful.
Lastly, can you provide us with your computer and web browser information so we can add that to our research? Do that by going here: https://www.whatsmybrowser.org/ — copy and paste the browser information at the top, and the Operating System a little further down the page. Thank you so much, and we look forward to you reply so we can help.
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I set the title right at the beginning, I think the change of title was only about 5 minutes or so before everything vanished.
It’s Chrome 117, and Windows 10.
Am now re-writing post, but would really like to know what happened, so it doesn’t happen again! Thanks for looking into it.
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Thanks for clarifying.
Because you appear to have re-written the full post at this point, it’s difficult for us to investigate. I am able to see your past revisions for the post here: https://musicb3.wordpress.com/wp-admin/revision.php?revision=20324
I’m not sure if the missing content you were referring to was captured here, but in the righthand column of the post editor, you will see the option to view revisions (for that post specifically) and this can be a useful tool in locating content that you feel is missing.
You can see what revisions we’ve stored by moving the slider at the top of that page, but I do not recommend clicking the button to restore a revision, since that would overwrite the current content.
We have more info about revisions here that may be worth checking out:
The WordPress editor autosaves your work and stores a revision history for each page and post on your site. This guide will show you how to restore an earlier version of a page or post. How to Save While editing, your changes are automatically saved to your local device every 15 seconds and online about once per minute. At the top-right of the editing screen, you’ll see the notification moThere is also an autosave feature that will attempt to save as you write, but for your piece of mind I recommend manually clicking the “save draft” link at the top of the editor. It is found near where the publish button is located, and unlike with autosaves (which create revisions only periodically) a revision is stored every time you manually save your draft.
Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have any more questions.
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Hi,
Thanks for this. Yes, sorry I had to re-write as I had a deadline.
But what you say about the revisions, is what the problem is. There is no record of a revision or an autosave between 15:10 on the 28th September and 19:14. In fact I was working continuously on it between 15:30 and 18:00, but every revision vanished. And there was no possibility of saving the draft as the Save Draft option also disappeared. There was no outage, or any other obvious reason as to why this should have happened.
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@mj263 thanks for letting us know. My best guess is that even though there wasn’t an obvious outage, there was a blip somewhere and your editor got disconnected from the server. Think of it like a phone call getting disconnected even though there’s no outage. It’s rare, but it can happen.
If you run into a case again where the save button is gone even though you’ve been there typing all along, the connection is suspect, so here’s what I’d recommend:
- Switch to the Code Editor
- Select All
- Copy
- Personally, I’d paste into a text file just to be sure it copied right, and to have a backup just in case
- Refresh the page (and therefore the connection)
- If anything’s missing, you can select all and paste
Hoping this helps!
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Ah, thank you, that makes sense. And many thanks for the tips on the missing Save Draft. I will make a note of that for the future.
Annoying that I couldn’t retrieve the draft (it was such a good post too :-D ), but thanks to all of you for your helpful suggestions.
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Losing good work really is the worst, I’m sorry you dealt with that! I’m hoping they’ll come up with some easier fall-back options in case of a connection blip like that, but for now if something seems off, just copy and you’ll have it all there. Thanks for understanding!
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