New to Obsidian, so I’ve been doing things and then learning better ways or that I missed something in set-up previously. In this case I had missed setting up an Attachments folder and having my images saved there.
Set that up, it worked for new attachments, so I started moving existing files from my root folder there.
They were usually in batches so I would get messages in a row such as:
Perfect I didn’t want them deleted, everything seemed fine.
Except, all images from any canvas, have apparently been deleted.
Questions:
What may have happened and how do I prevent this?
Where DID all those images go?
A number of them I can recover as they were images downloaded first. Once I saw how I could use a Canvas though I started putting the images directly into a canvas, those images are completely gone.
None of the images in standard notes were deleted.
They are not in the Attachments folder (or any other Obsidian folder); they are not in the Obsidian .trash folder; they are not in my system trash (where I have deleted items set to go) where a deleted canvas or .md file can be found.
I’ve searched the forums and online but most of what I found related to the terms around images or attachments and deletion was in regards to orphaned files. I did not see anything specific to my issue with a Canvas.
I found “Attachments in canvas are deleted by mistake” on Github but that was in regards to a plugin I do not have installed. There were no details either on possible causes or solutions.
There seem to be several things going on in your post. I’ll try to list them — but not necessarily address them — for clearer understanding.
When you moved your attachments to a different folder, they were deleted, or at least Obsidian (and/or a plugin) saw them as deleted. Why? You were moving, not deleting…right? Did you accidentally delete instead of moving? Was the new folder outside your vault? It seems all of the files would have been deleted if something didn’t intervene to prevent the deletion.
You received messages saying some of them wouldn’t be deleted because they are still in use. Those messages aren’t a built in feature. They must have come from a plugin — possibly the plugin you mention and link later in your post. I think it would be best to determine where the messages came from.
A plugin that prevents attachments from being deleted if they are used by notes did not prevent images used by canvases from being deleted. I would guess this is because the plugin doesn’t check if they are used by canvases. Consult the plugin’s description/documentation to see if it is intended to support this. You can also consult the Issues page of the plugin’s GitHub to see if there is a relevant bug report of feature request. (The GitHub is linked near the top of the plugin’s description.)
I just moved them as I used the right click “move file to” option.
The issue was definitely the plugin mentioned.
When I disabled it and tried to recreate issues, I couldn’t.
Re-enabled, issue returned.
Didn’t see anything in the documentation but I will just discontinue use of the plugin.
I never did find the images were deleted to but at least I know why it was happening.
