Locked & Vanishing Files in Dreamweaver and InDesign
Do you use Dreamweaver? Have you ever been editing a file and then suddenly you can’t save it and Dreamweaver reports the file as locked? And then if you reboot to unlock the file, you discover it has vanished?
Do you use the InDesign book feature? Have you ever saved the book and then discovered that it has vanished?
Both problems appear to occur only with CS4 running on Vista. Here are the workarounds.
When you encounter the Dreamweaver locked file bug, just save the file under another name and wait a half hour or so. You don’t have to reboot. The improperly locked file will disappear, and then you can rename the file back to what it was.
The main thing to remember about the InDesign book bug is to always look at the directory after saving the book file to make sure it’s still there. If it has vanished, then use Save As to resave it.
Important: If InDesign prompts you to save the book file on exit, don’t do it! It will prompt you to save it even if you have just saved it and there have been no changes. If you say yes to save on exit, InDesign will delete the file and then it will be truly gone.
I reported the InDesign book bug to Adobe. Somebody from Adobe did email me, but he found it too much trouble to set up a 64-bit Vista test system (my platform) so it wasn’t fixed.
I didn’t bother reporting the Dreamweaver bug because I saw in an internet search that others had and Adobe just ignored the reports.
The CS4 Design Pro Suite costs nearly $2000. Why don’t they fix such serious bugs?
stevo:
This just happened to me in DW CS4 and I assumed it was me doing something wrong.
The thought of rewriting the CSS file from scratch that I was working on is a horrible prospect, I saved in notepad, rebooted Dreamweaver, and found the file had disappeared and I could save a new one with the same name (no ‘this file already exists’ prompt).
As bugs go it has to be said this is a pretty big one, you could easily lose a great deal of work this way with an accidental click.
Sort it Out Adobe!
July 21, 2009, 9:51 amTapestry:
This too, just happened to me in DW CS4; not nice! I guess it’s time to reach out and call Adobe. I’m in the process of redesigning a site I have published since 2004 using FrontPage and was excited to redesign and switch over to Dreamweaver. My excitement has now turned to fear.
February 5, 2010, 10:02 amExe:
Me too, and I’m running windows 7 with the CS4package
March 2, 2010, 4:39 ami opened a file in dreamweaver, modified, tried to save and got the same bug
i dont get they’re not doing anything about it!
TC:
This is a real PIA. My current suspicion is the preview pane in Windows Explorer is causing this: by creating a preview in Windows Explorer (64bit) ‘locks’ an open file. It gets all confused and destroys the file when the open file is saved by an application.
Disable it and see if the problem returns. Doesn’t seem to be unique to Adobe ~ has happened in WordPad!
September 20, 2010, 7:41 pmbilly bob:
This seems to be more of a windows issue rather than and Adobe Suite issue.
I am seeing Vista – Win 7 etc….
Im on a Mac been running CS4 since it came out (also ran it on XP for a while) all without any issues as stated.
Neer encountereed the InDesign issue at all – BUT if you all are having locked File issues w/ DW – I do suggest checking the Preference Settings involving file Check In / Check Out and make sure that is NOT active. This sometimes defaults to ON when you set up a Test Site in Site Manager.
BUT the setting is in PRefs not Site Manager.
And again – Ive never had theses issues on a Mac.
February 14, 2011, 5:21 pm