General ⇒ LaTeX source code recovery

[Helgsig]

Hi guys

Disaster has struck. While I was compiling my code, thus creating the pdf file and saving the whole thing, my computer lost suddenly power.

Now my whole thing is lost, the pdf is corrupt, tex file is empty, the aux file is empty and ends with .synctex.gz(busy)

The only thing that has any visible data is the synctex file, which is just a bunch of numbers.

Any ideas on recovering my work?

I'm using Texworks v0.1 - Miktex 2.8

[frabjous]

The synctex.gz file is not the same as the aux file. The synctex file is a file that records the correspondences between locations in the PDF with their corresponding locations in the source code. TeXworks uses this file to allow you to jump from a place in the PDF preview to the corresponding place in the source document, and vice-versa. The numbers are just positions of elements in the PDF and the corresponding positions in the source.

I'm afraid there's no way to retrieve the contents of the source file from the synctex.gz file: just positions. (And yours seems to only have been partially written anyway, hence the "busy".)

So unless you were using something that makes incremental back-ups (e.g., saving files in a Dropbox account), or something similar, your work is probably lost.

[Helgsig]

Thanks for the quick reply....I guess I'll just have to start over.

[localghost]

Now that the problem seems to be solved (in some way), please be so kind and mark the topic (not the last post) accordingly as clearly written in Section 3 of the Board Rules (to be read before posting). Please keep that in mind for the future so that further reminders will not be necessary.


Best regards and welcome to the board
Thorsten