No Backups

[michael graubart]

I use Finale 26 on a Mac with OS Mojave.

To my dismay, possibly after the update to v. 26 or at some other time, Finale is not creating backups of saved scores any more. As a consequence I have lost an accidentally deleted score of a choral piece that had been commissioned for the BBC Singers! (Fortunately I had, and have, a pdf copy; but this is hard to edit.)

In Finale Preferences, Backups is checked.

Any advice to remedy this will be gratefully received and acted on.

[miker]

Since you’re on a Mac, do you have Time Machine backing up to an external drive? If not, you should!

[michelp]

If you have emptied your trashcan, there are some utilities which are able to recover some files. Don't save any other file in the meantime, because it may reduce the chances of recovery of files there are still intact.

Besides Time Machine, a robust back-up policy would also include distant automatic back-ups (using Dropbox, Google Drive, etc..).
They allow restoring consecutive versions.

[motet]

Look at Preferences/Folders/Backup files. Your backups are probably there.

[michael graubart]

Thank you both — but the point of my post was precisely that there was no backup of my score in Finale files/Backup, and I have since then confirmed that no new scores are backed up. And I repeat that in Finale Preferences, Backups is checked.

I have not yet had time to check up in my Time Machine backup drive or my CCC backup drive, but I don't think these go back far enough. The loss occurred quite a long time ago, and it was because I discovered some errors in the pdf score just recently that I wanted to retrieve the Finale one.

[David Ward]

I'm absolutely not an expert in this; but is it possible that if the PDF was made directly from Finale that a scan of it might be worth trying to import into Finale to create an editable file? I've never tried to import any kind of scan into Finale, but I seem to remember reading (here?) that scans of Finale generated PDFs are recognized by Finale with fewer errors than other scans.

(Or is this unhelpful nonsense?)

[motet]

Thank you both — but the point of my post was precisely that there was no backup of my score in Finale files/Backup, and I have since then confirmed that no new scores are backed up. And I repeat that in Finale Preferences, Backups is checked.

Have you confirmed that Preferences/Folders/Backup files is pointing to what you call Finale files/Backup? I read your post, but you haven't confirmed this. This is different from Preferences/Save/Make backups.

[gogreen]

Did you use Finder to search your entire computer for the file?

[michael graubart]

Thank you all for a variety of suggestions.

gogreen: yes, I did. Nothing found. This overrides most other search possibilities, except Time Machine and CCC, which I shall try in due course.

motet: yes, it points to the right location.

David Ward: this makes good sense, and I had earlier on thought of trying it, but got onto another track (see below). My past experience with importing complex 12-note scores with continually changing metres was not encouraging, but maybe it might yield better results in the particular circumstances as you suggest.

Searching for deleted files: I have more than one app for this. I tried two of them, but the accidental deletion happened too long ago.

NB: I have now twice created small test files (.musx), and they have not been backed up anywhere. There is something operationally wrong, and I shall lose more scores in the future if it cannot be rectified.

I have found a solution of sorts to the correcting and editing problem, though it has its limitations and a disadvantage. By means of Preview (standard Mac app), I exported my pdf score as a TIFF (multipage) file. I could then use Preview to select items such as accidentals and dynamics from one part of the score and paste them into another, or just delete wrong ones in the same way. I could then re-export the multipage TIFF file as a pdf. The limitations are that it is hard to change actual notes on staves, though it can be done; I have not tried slurs and ties. The disadvantage is that for some reason that I do not really understand, though I have a glimmering of a clue, the final pdf score is vastly larger in file-size than the original, which makes it hard to send by email (though the answer to that lies with apps like WeTransfer).

But the main problem is still that Finale is not creating backups at all for me. All you ingenious and helpful readers, please address this rather than finding my lost choral score, which I have managed to rectify as described.

[motet]

Before saving, use the Mac OS to rename filename.musx (whatever it is) to filename.bakx. That's all Finale really does. No need to use TIFF.

[michael graubart]

Thanks v. much for that tip. But I described the use of TIFF for editing a pdf copy of a lost .musx file - too late for backup!

Reverting to backups, am I not right in thinking that Finale used to save backups (.bakx) automatically when saving a score as .musx?

[BuonTempi]

Finale makes a backup if the preference is set in the Preferences > Save panel.

As for editing PDFs: use a vector drawing package to edit PDFs, such as Adobe Illustrator (expensive), Inkscape (free), Graphic (on the Mac App Store for little money) or other.

These will treat each element as an individual object, rather than being a bitmap (black or white ink). Preview isn't really a sufficiently good tool.

[zuill]

Beside a Backup, Finale also creates Autosave files. Those can be very helpful if they are set on a short timespan. I have 5 minutes set, so, if things go south, I have only lost up to 5 minutes of work (could be less). If you didn't set up Autosave as an option, then you're out of luck.

Zuill

[michael graubart]

Buon Tempi, you have lived up to your name! That is precisely the answer to my general problem. And Zuill, thank you for the recommendation for future work, which I shall follow. In this particular instance, my score was saved, but somehow got deleted later. Thank you both veery much indeed.

[michael graubart]

PS: Buon Tempi, thank you, too, for the recommendations for pdf editing tools. I shall explore them.

[motet]

So the problem was that Preferences/Save/Make backups (Buon Tempi's picture) was not checked after all?

[michael graubart]

No, I am afraid it now turns out that that was not the problem. When I read Buon Tempi's message, I was delighted, of course, but forgot that I had already checked the Preferences. Here is a screenshot of my Preferences setting.

It is beginning to seem that there is something wrong with the Finale software.

[motet]

You should also be getting the Autosave files (.asvx) then.

Click on Folders and then look at "Backup" and "Auto Save." If they're blank, then the backups and autosave files will be put in the same directories as your .musx files. If folders are specified, click "Browse" next to them and make sure they exist.

Test it by creating a new file, saving and closing it, then opening and saving again and see if the backup file is created.

If after all that Finale really seems broken, it's worth trying this:

https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... rashes+etc

[michael graubart]

Thank you once more. Later on I shall do more experimenting and report back.

[michael graubart]

I have now done some more testing of Finale’s backup facility by creating small Finale files and saving them with different preference combinations of Make Backups When Saving Files (‘Backups’) and Auto Save File(s) Every … Minutes (‘Auto Save’). As it seems that some apparently random behaviours may depend on the order in which things are done, these trials should be repeated by others, using more variables. 

In every case, a newly created file had first to be saved manually so as to permit a location to be specified.


1. Neither

Name of first file appeared in BU list (Documents > Finale Files > Backups); did not remain in BU after the file in BU had been opened and closed again. When original file was re-opened, modified and saved again, it did NOT reappear in BU.

A second Finale file was created and saved. Its name did NOT appear in BU, and again it did not appear after being modified and saved again.


2. Autosave

File saved manually as usual (BU was not in this instance observed at this stage), then modified and not saved manually. Name appeared in BU when Autosave had operated after the specified number of minutes, but did NOT remain in BU after the computer had been shut down and restarted.


3. Backup

File-name did NOT appear in BU after the initial manual save. File was then modified and saved manually; it now did appear in BU and remained after computer was shut down and restarted. On opening file and modifying it once more and saving manually, the modified file again appeared and stayed.


4. Autosave + Backup

As before, file did not appear in BU list after initial manual save. After being modified and saved manually, it appeared. After a further modification and a wait until Autosave had saved the file, it again appeared.

Very alarmingly, after a further modification and a manual save, it DISAPPEARED from the BU list.
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1. Apart from the unexpected initial appearance of the file-name in BU, which may mislead one into thinking that a backup was created, this option’s behaviour is unsurprising.

2. This is highly misleading and dangerous.

3. This appears to be the only safe and reliable option.

4. This is probably the most dangerous option. Like many computer users, I am in the habit of saving any file I am working on every few minutes manually. But it is tempting to select this option so that if one forgets to save manually, the file is saved anyway. This option is potentially disastrous, as I discovered when my recent choral score was accidentally deleted.
___________________

It would be good if other Finale users could confirm these findings. It would be even better if MakeMusic would issue an update to Finale in which the backup situation is made intuitively reliable.

[zuill]

All you report does sound scary. I use Windows and Backup and Autosave both have worked fine for me for years, and nothing missing or lost. Either there are differences in how you set things up, or this is a Mac only issue. I hope you get things figured out.

One thing that I should say. Every time I set up a new version of Finale, I create my own folders for files (normal and backup). That is because Finale wants to use one folder for all versions of Finale. I prefer to have each version of Finale use a unique folder. Comingling the files doesn't work for me. I also set up a unique designated folder for the temp files which are only usable while Finale is open. Those should be deleted after closing Finale. Since that doesn't always happen, I clean those out very regularly, sometimes daily. I have a separate temp folder for each and every version of Finale i have installed.

Zuill

[michael graubart]

That sounds a really good, systematic scheme, Zuill. Actually I only use one version of Finale (currently v. 26) on a Mac (Mojave). But even so I shall think about adopting a scheme like this. Thank you.

[BuonTempi]

I don't think you've said whether you've checked Time Machine for a backup copy?

Because I found Finale's Auto-save unreliable, I use ForeverSave 2, a Mac app which automatically saves every x minutes and keeps versions of each save. It has saved my bacon several times, (like Finale's bug when all lyrics would disappear - I could copy and paste the lyrics from an earlier version, and still keep the other changes I'd made to the notes in the new document).

Having to do file management manually is not what computers are for!

[David Ward]

… … …Because I found Finale's Auto-save unreliable, I use ForeverSave 2, a Mac app which automatically saves every x minutes and keeps versions of each save.… … …

I agree and strongly recommend ForeverSave 2 https://toolforcesoftware.com/foreversave/ which costs only a token amount and is absolutely worth it.

One thing I did have to watch with it was when I upgraded from Finale 25 to F 26, but continued to use F25 for some pieces, I needed to ‘inform’ ForeverSave that I wanted it to save in whichever I was using and not only in 26, as the way Finale installed 26 made 25 seem irrelevant to ForeverSave (or something…).

[Kroy]

On a Mac Finale backups default setting is that they are saved in Documents/Finale Files/Backups
In order to change this so that a backup is automatically created in the same folder as the original file go to Finale Preferences/Folders and uncheck the Backup Files tab.
Of course, in Finale Preferences/Save 'Make Backups When Saving Files' should be checked.