I am sick! I am just learning programming and have been working on my first project. I had the Arduino program open and was trouble shooting issues in the program when my computer just shut down. No big deal I think, I saved the file after nearly every minor change.
After I restart the computer, my file is GONE! I can still see and open a few of the tutorial files I have been learning from, but my file is nowhere. I am running Windows.
After doing a search, I find several files with a portion of my file name in the name hidden away in the AppData folder. The files are dated/timed to match when the computer shut down.
This is where I am hoping someone can come to the rescue and tell me an awesome way to get my sketch back ...
It happens to me sometimes. I save a sketch, shutdown, but when I go to open it again it opens an older file as if I hadn't saved.
If you find the file that is similar to you sketch name but has .cop at the end, that contains the last version of your sketch that you uploaded.
It's actually the c plus plus code for your sketch but can easily be converted back to The original sketch. If you find the cpp file and it looks like your sketch with a few changes, post it in a new topic asking for help copying from cpp back to sketch and I or someone else will help.
PS your unlucky when I asked about this happening to me it seemed I was the only one having the problem.
When I make a change to a sketch, I save it as a new version number, so when the worst happens and I lose the working copy I have several copies that would only need minor tweaks to bring back. With the size of hard drives in modern computers, a couple of megabytes for 37 copies of your sketch is entirely inconsequential.
Use the search function to try to locate .cpp files. You might find the copy the IDE made in a temporary folder somewhere, which with a small amount of editing, you can change back to your .ino file.
Also search for .ino files, maybe it is somewhere you least expect it.