Edits lost, despite saving project regularly

[HamishRobertson]

I have been doing detailed editing of river courses and saved periodically using Ctrl-S. I have only realized now that this did not save my edits (just the project) because the option to save edits was not checked by default (I have now checked it). When I exited, a number of save screens appeared and I only clicked the first one because I thought the others might be saving over the real data. Unfortunately, I have lost all of the day's edits. I find it difficult to believe that the default is to not save edits when Ctrl-S is pressed. I don't suppose there is a way of recovering my lost work? I am using version 3 (recently installed). Needless to say, I am a newby, learning through hard knocks. I have also now realized that I should not be saving to OneDrive.

[MichaelVolz]

Why should you not be saving to OneDrive?  What is the problem with that workflow?

[HamishRobertson]

See https://support.esri.com/en/technical-article/000025605. Up to now I have used OneDrive with no problems and I don't think my problem today is linked to that.

[MichaelVolz]

That support page appears to reference up to Pro 2.9.2.  It would be great to hear from ESRI if their cloud storage support has changed with the release of Pro 3.0.

https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-questions/can-we-force-pro-to-not-automatically-save-all/m-...

Above is a thread related to your saving edits problem.

[wayfaringrob · Accepted solution]

Yes, saving edits is different than saving the project, which is what Ctrl+S does. It helps to think of a project file as a table on which you can get out a bunch of data, mess with it, and customize how it looks. When you save the project, you're saving these customizations - taking a picture of the table so the application knows how you had it set up next time you open it. If you make any edits to the underlying data, then yes, you need to use the appropriate save button. You're going beyond changing how the data looks for your project; you're changing the data itself and replacing the original that's on file with the library, per se. This data can be accessed elsewhere, not just within the project; you may use a project as a mechanism for changing it, but data is stored entirely independently from the project and needs to be saved separately as well.

Better cloud storage is in the roadmap for ArcGIS Pro: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-documents/arcgis-pro-roadmap-june-2022/ta-p/1187498

[PaulMahon]

Selecting "Project" - >  "Options" ->  "Edits"  ->   there's a box you can check that will save EDITS when Saving Project.   Making it an easier 1-button save process.

[HamishRobertson]

Thanks for the explanation. For the uninitiated, the structure of data in ArcGIS Pro is far from obvious and I do think the default should be to save everything, as it is an integrated environment. Most databases these days save the data as records as you go along - surely the commit action when editing vertices, etc., should be sufficient to execute a save. I find it puzzling that the first indication that I hadn't saved stuff was when I exited the application after a day's work and it came as a series of separate interfaces that did not make it very clear what needed to be saved. I was able to catch up quite quickly today, so I am more upbeat than I was yesterday evening!