Writer document restore deleted last part of my document

[ultradian]

I have recently been setting up a new laptop with Debian 12 which uses Wayland and LibreOffice Community version 7.4.5.1. I have a document in writer that I copied over and have been working on for a few weeks. I recently noticed I didn’t have any docs in my Backup folder and so turned on Save AutoRecovery and set that in Options. But on my last login I got a notice that I needed to Restore a damaged document. After I did that, I found my document had several months of edits removed (before I even transferred to the new machine). When I went to look in Options, I found my AutoRecovery was turned off and I had no backup.

I’m wondering if this is an issue with my version of the software or my setup. Any ideas?

[Hrbrgr]

If you have set Backup and Storage correctly for Restore mode, you should at least find a backup.
Or perhaps you have instructed a clean-up tool to delete certain things.
In no case can such a thing be traced from a distance.
But to be on the safe side for your future work, I recommend reading this article:
Preventing data disaster

[Wanderer]

@ultradian

didn’t have any docs in my Backup folder and so turned on Save AutoRecovery

This are separate features:
save backup copy will save/copy the previous version, before overwriting the old version by saving the current one from RAM. This helps in case you have a crash during save, wich could then loose the data from RAM and damage the saved file, because save was interrupted.
.
Information for autorecovery helps to get back the last set of unsaved data - if recovery works. It does not help to reconstruct data older than last saved version.

@ultradian

found my document had several months of edits removed

The settings in LibreOffice are no replacement for an external backup with versions. For everything important, wich can not easily restored use backup-software. There are plenty oft them from back-in-time to Borg-backup. Use them, and don’t forget to have one backup at minimum outside your computer and office/rooms. Just think on fire or water…

[ultradian]

@Hrbrgr Thanks for the link. That was very helpful. It confirms what @Wanderer clarified - that the AutoRecovery feature every X minutes only saves recent changes in a temp file for rescue from a crash. The link also describes the ‘Backup’ setting which creates a .bak file.