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Medhead Author

Level 1

4 points

Keynote crashed, presentation file disappeared

In searching through the discussion forums, I've found a lot of disastrous problems that people have had with Keynote, but not this exact disaster.

I'm running Keynote '09 version 5.3, on OS 10.8.4. Today, about half an hour before an important presentation at work, I was running my presentation as a slide show, just to make sure all the slides seemed to be working okay. During the slide show, Keynote hung for a while, and then suddenly quit, leaving me looking at my desktop, with no other error message. I went to reopen the presentation, but the file was gone. It had simply vanished from the folder where it used to be. It's not in the Trash, nor is it anywhere else on my Mac, according to the file search that I ran. In Keynote, when I pull down the File -> Open Recent menu, the disappeared file does not appear in the list of recent files. If I pull down Apple -> Recent Items. I can see the disappeared file in the list of recent documents, but then if I try to select the file, nothing happens.

So here are my questions:

1. Can I recover my file? I've already had to cancel my presentation today, and I would be able recreate my .key file by going back to an older version and redoing three or four hours of work. But I'd prefer not to redo that work, if I can help it.

2. Is it safe for me to run Keynote? Is it going to continue destroying every presentation file that I open?

3. Is there some larger problem happening with my filesystem? Is it safe for me to run anything?

Posted on Jul 9, 2013 4:51 PM

92 replies

DrL

Level 1

110 points

Jul 25, 2013 6:04 PM in response to Medhead

I owe everyone an update to my saga. Sorry I have been out of touch after my rant but I had to get my presentation done and delivered, which I did last night with no problems. Not that I wasn't worried about crashing the entire time...

I saw that someone mentioned videos/audio causing the hang-up so I removed the two videos I had and it appeared I was out of the woods. It was much better, but then it still disappeared once more and crashed again before I finally finished my presentation. Tedious doesn't begin to describe saving the file in 3 different places every few slides, keeping multiple older versions, just in case. Frustrating, but Apple is lucky my dislike of PP is greater.

Then I also received an email from the iWork team re: my issue. I have provided them access to the video file in question and detailed my issue. I have received follow-ups for more files and information and I am cooperating in hopes this gets figured out.

A friend also mentioned the Auto-Save feature possibly being a problem but I am hesitant to mess with it because when KN crashes, I only lose a move or two, and the crashes are unpredictable. When I lost the file in my original post, it locked up in the middle of saving, then KN crashed, creating the black hole where my file was gone with no sign of it. I haven't seen it in any of the directories mentioned in this thread, and the file was being kept on my Desktop.

That's the latest, now on to the next presentation and the next adventure. Good luck all.

krypttic

Level 2

492 points

Jul 27, 2013 2:19 AM in response to DrL

I can't dig up the link right now, but I posted about this over a month ago. The problem started happening right after the latest Mountain Lion Update.

I lost a few presentations as well. The first one happened while I was teaching a class. The presentation froze for over a minute, then Keynote shut down, then the presenation had vanished into thin air.

My solution for now was to duplicate all my presentations so they are stored on a different place on the hard drive. These "fresh" copies have crashed a few times, but I haven't had any mysterioulsy dissappear since.

krypttic

Level 2

492 points

Jul 27, 2013 2:23 AM in response to krypttic

Here's a link to the discussion I started in the 10.8.4 forum: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5083126?start=0&tstart=0

Jul 31, 2013 2:52 PM in response to Medhead

Just discovered Keynote and was so happy with it, did'nt leave my desktop for days, and then, after some funny failures while showing the results, everything just disappeared. I put a short movie in it , and, indeed, it happened after that, but the possibility of combining pictures, sound and film is the main reason for me to like keynote.

Katrien

Medhead Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 31, 2013 6:37 PM in response to Medhead

For what it's worth, I managed to redo all of the work that I lost when my presentation disappeared, and then to get through my presentation at work, without any crashes or files disappearing. It was still a huge pain, because I was constantly making copies of my file in case it disappeared again. And of course, for unfathomable reasons, Keynote doesn't have a "save as" command to help with this kind of thing.

As I mentioned before, my .key file originally contained audio files (.wmv, I think). I had deleted the audio components at some point before my crash. Since then, I have not added back any audio or video files. I wonder if that's why it seems to be working now. Has anyone experienced the "crash and file erased" problem with files that never contained any audio or video files? Maybe that's a useful clue.

I must say, Apple is really blowing it on this one. This problem never should have happened in the first place, and it should have been fixed by now. At the very least, Apple should issue some sort of a warning so that people don't lose huge amounts of their work. Like the Apple Maps fiasco, this is just the kind of thing that's responsible for the rapid decline in Apple's once solid-gold reputation among consumers. Is anyone out there considering the consequences for the brand when someone is trying to give a presentation to a room of 1000 people, and Keynote crashes and deletes their presentation file, forcing the cancellation of the whole event?

krypttic

Level 2

492 points

Jul 31, 2013 9:25 PM in response to Medhead

This really is a terrible bug and I too am surpised that Apple hasn't fixed it yet. Other users have reported that Apple has requested their system logs, so presumably someone over there is investigating the issue.

Is anyone out there considering the consequences for the brand when someone is trying to give a presentation to a room of 1000 people, and Keynote crashes and deletes their presentation file, forcing the cancellation of the whole event?

Yes. My presentation crashed in front of ~400 students (I teach a large college class) and then the orignal file was completely gone. I had to teach the rest of the class using an old copy of pdf notes from the previous term.

I also suspect that this has something to do with the Autosave functionality, as my presenations did not crash until I perfomed some sort of edit and then hit play. All of my presentatoins are fairly large and contain both audio and video. I suspect that the amount of space allocated for Autosaves is not sufficient to accommodate the whole file and things start to overlap. Twice after a crash, I launched Disk Utility and it reported directory errors. My best guess is that the AutoSave file was trying to share the same directory space as the original file and when the two confilcted they wiped each other out. Even TimeMachine backups of the file were missing, as if the system told it that the file never existed at all.

So now, I've made multiple backups of my presenations in case this happens again. I can't count on the orginal file, and I can't count on the Time Machine backup so I'm constantly paranoid that I'm goning to have another problem. Unfortunately, even if things work perfectly from now on, I'm goign to be worried about a repeat instance and it's really taking away from my abilty to present effectively.

AJ898

Level 1

10 points

Aug 6, 2013 9:48 PM in response to Medhead

My file crashed again. I lost an entire days work. I wrote to Apple without and response. This reminds me of the days of the Apple II when Apple didn't give a darn about people using thier products for business. If this was a Powerpoint issue MS would be all over it.

I am truly disgusted with Apple's response. Unrelieable machine is worst then not machine.

AJ898

Level 1

10 points

Aug 7, 2013 9:16 AM in response to Medhead

I had a long discussion with Apple Support regarding this issue. Obviously there was nothing that telephone support could do. I spoke with Adam who is a senior official. He downloaded my system logs and he says he will contact the engineer and get back to me. I directed Adam to this forum so that he could see that it's not just one person having these same issues. He gave me his telephone number so when it freezes again I can contact him before I force quit.

He cautioned me to make regular backups of the file. I explained that backing up is useless because when the file disappears from my computer it also disappears from timemachine and the any other backup. The only backup solution that I can see is to make a backup and then physically disconnect the backup drive from the computer.

Does anyone have a better short term solution?

Medhead Author

Level 1

4 points

Aug 7, 2013 9:51 AM in response to AJ898

AJ898, I'm thinking your backing up might work better if you do it in the Finder rather than with Time Machine. I.e.:

1. In the finder, open up the folder containing your presentation.

2. Select your presentation, hit command-C, then command-V to copy and paste, respectively. Now you'll have a new file called something like "Presentation copy.key".

3. Manually rename the copied file with some sort of timestamp, like "Presentation copy 231 PM" (you can't use a colon in a filename).

4. Every few minutes, repeat steps 2-4, so that you'll end up with mutiple backups with multiple timestamps. You can delete the older ones eventually, as you see fit.

This is what I did recently. It's a huge pain, and it shouldn't have been necessary, because there should be a "save as" command in Keynote, but there isn't. I don't know if your renamed backup files would survive a crash, but they might. Can anyone confirm that this approach prevents backed up files from disappearing?

In my opinion, Apple is really, really blowing it on this one. Obviously, a problem like this should never happen if appropriate quality control measures are in place. And once Apple became aware of it, they should have fixed it right away. And if they can't figure out how to fix it, they should at least send an email blast out to registered users, warning them not to upgrade their OS, and/or not to use Keynote, and/or to make frequent backups, or not embed audio or video files, or something.

I've been using Apple computers for serious and not-so-serious purposes for about 34 years now. I'm getting the impression that Apple is consciously changing its brand identity from "smart, robust, versatile computers that just work" to "flashy media-displaying status symbols for style-conscious, free-spending teenagers." We do get a new iTunes update every few months, with no substantive improvements, but with progressively prettier user interfaces that are harder and harder to use (at least for me). Maybe I would have appreciated that back in the days when I was making mix tapes for girls that I liked, but as an adult, I'm feeling pretty left out in the cold by Apple lately.

AJ898

Level 1

10 points

Aug 7, 2013 10:31 AM in response to Medhead

To "save as" hold down the command key when pulling down the file tab. What I am doing I duplicate the file and then save as to the origninal file location with the original file name followed by copy.

Thank you for taking the time to try and help me out....

AJ898

Level 1

10 points

Aug 7, 2013 10:37 AM in response to Medhead

Sorry...."option" not command key.

Medhead Author

Level 1

4 points

Aug 7, 2013 11:16 AM in response to AJ898

I just tried that now. I didn't notice anything different happening when I held down option while pulling down the file menu. I'm not sure why Keynote would work differently for me like that. Maybe this is related: I notice that when I save a .key file, another file appears next to it with a tilde in its name, sort of emacs-style. I.e. if I save "foo.key", another file appears in the same directory called "foo~.key". I don't think that was the case before my epic crash. Maybe that's related to all the desperate measures I took after losing my file, which included trying to disable Keynote's autosave "function."

AJ898, if I understand you correctly, you created a duplicate file within Keynote, and then used "save as" within Keynote to create a new file with a slightly different name, right? Did you lose both files when Keynote subsequently crashed?

If that's true, I'm wondering if maybe creating the new file in the Finder instead of in Keynote might be more effective in hiding the existence of the backup files from Keynote, so that it can't find them and annihilate them. But of course I really don't know. That's some pretty sophisticated evil that Keynote is doing, if it's able to erase files even from Time Machine backups.

AJ898

Level 1

10 points

Aug 7, 2013 11:38 AM in response to Medhead

I hold down the option key while pulling down the file menu. Save as then appears under the save option. This is one of the Apple hidden menues,

When I have the Keynote file open, I duplicate from the fill pull down menue. The duplicate file has the same name as the original followed by "copy." I then hold the option key down, pull down the file menue and save as to the original file location.

This is a pain the neck, but at least I will have an updated copy the next time it freezes.

JMB2

Level 1

10 points

Aug 9, 2013 5:43 PM in response to Medhead

Took my laptop into Apple Store for genius evaluation. They agreed there was a problem. Ended up reinstalling entire OS and iWork, including Keynote. So far, seems to be running better.

AJ898

Level 1

10 points

Aug 11, 2013 2:35 PM in response to Medhead

Apple support called me back with a status report. Engineering says this is a known problem as described. No patch can be expected in the near future. Advise? Backup your data. Of course if you depend on timemachine for backup it is a waste of time because the file disappears from your backup. Not much help.

I didn't get a sense that this is an urgent problem to Apple; maybe because they think the only people using Keynote are 5th grader creating show and tell presentations.

I can't depend on a program that will crash in the middle of a presentation. I guess I am the uptight Windows person in their commericials, but I need the program to work. All the cool stuff the world is going to make up for a crashed presentation.

My advise, convert to Powerpoint and leave Keynote to the children.

How disappointing.

Keynote crashed, presentation file disappeared