A file I was using for planning a trip, had flight links, screenshots, research etc. Hours of research, pricing etc.
Went back to file this morning and the full body was empty, but the outline (on right hand panel) still showed all the headings I had. Weird
Closed Obsidan vault. Went to finder/icloud folder and opened the file using chrome to see if it would show the content. It strangely showed content of another file I edited recently.
Opened Obsidian again - Now my file is showing the same as what chrome showed and the outline is gone / replaced with the headings from the new content.
Is my original content lost completely now? Why would this happen?
It could be helpful to share the debug info of your vault to potentially help you determine why it happened …
It could also be useful to mention where is your vault currently stored and if you sync your notes across devices (and if yes, through which service) …
I mean, you’re mentioning iCloud, so one can only assume you’re using iCloud to store and/or sync your notes across devices but if there’s another sync service involved, this could also be problematic …
When it comes to the recovery, you could check the File Recovery core plugin to see if you can retrieve the content of your note from there…
Something I personally like to do though, when it comes to take a look at past version of a note is using TextEdit “Browse all versions” feature (I don’t know if it’ll work in your case though…)
Thanks so much for the file recovery tip - I got all the content back! Very Happy! I didn’t know this feature was there. I can continue my love affair with Obsidian after that little scare! (I left clickup after they lost a week of work when they were moving servers last year, so I have PTSD)
Vault Location: In main iCloud Drive folder, no other sync in use. Though worth mentioning I’m only using the one laptop/device and didn’t view/edit the note on another device.
SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v1.7.7
Installer version: v1.4.13
Operating system: Darwin Kernel Version 24.1.0: Thu Oct 10 21:05:14 PDT 2024; root:xnu-11215.41.3~2/RELEASE_ARM64_T8103 24.1.0
Login status: not logged in
Language: en
Insider build toggle: off
Live preview: on
Base theme: adapt to system
Community theme: none
Snippets enabled: 0
Restricted mode: off
Plugins installed: 2
Plugins enabled: 0
(Better safe than sorry … It will also help to alleviate any potential stress tied to “losing content” )
As for what happened exactly when it come to the note you temporary lost, other than an iCloud “hiccup” (which can happen), I don’t really see anything else …
Unless you have, on your Mac, the setting Optimize Mac Storage enabled…
In that case, iCloud could have decided to remove the download of your vault without you noticing… and as Obsidian needs the file to be available locally, that could have lead to some issues …
As I can see you’re on MacOS Sequoia, something that could help with iCloud would be to enable the Keep downloaded feature on your vault in iCloud Drive …
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