after computer crashing-exclusive acces

[Anonymous]

hi......
I think I lost the latest version of a project, that I have to handle over today, forever....
my computer crashed, I don't know why. When i had shut it down and turned on again, I tried to open my Archi Cad 13 file, and he said something about being already in use, and gave me three options-Open with exclusive access, don't open or open read only file. In a hurry and clearly without thinking I chose the exclusive access. The project i got open was without changes of the last 6 hours of work (and it's date and time of last changes are from the sime time-before the changes, when i last changed the file name and saved it.......since i have only a few hours left before the hand out, its quiet a problem and an emergency!!!
I am using archi cad 13 education version,my autosave is turned on, and the autosave and the .lck file I get when I open this archi cad file has a date and time just before crashing, and so do autosave files that appear when the file is open. I dont know what does it mean, but it just gave me some kind of a hope that somehow my latest version might still exist somewhere......although I'm slowly starting to make my peace with doing the project all over again..
of course, when the file is closed, there is no autosave folder and no .lck file.

please help me as soon as you can if there is any help for me at all.........
or at least tell me what to do next time.

by the way, is there any way to get artlantis to work, after passing the time limit of a trial version? without paying, that is.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Your thinking was correct, the modification date of the file should tell you when it was last modified and how much data is possibly retained. So if you have a file with a modification data and an Autosave with a later modification date, then obviously the Autosave version is the later that has more data left.

Open the Autosave file and save it under a new name.
Then you will have it and you can check whether it contains the info you need.

It is good practice by the way to just do CTRL+S to hard-save the file, something you apparently have not done in that 6 hour period. But that is for future.

The Exclusive access message comes up because of the LCK file (lock file). The LCK file tells ArchiCAD that someone have is already using the file.
In case of a crash, the program does not have the opportunity to delete the LCK file when you close the PLN file, so it stays there and gives you this message.
But if you were using the PLN file, then it is of no consequence to open the file with exclusive access.