Journal Files - Project Recovery

[Steve_Stafford]

Is it possible to recover a project via the journal files that Revit creates. I've got a little project that was "crushed" somehow. It won't load at all and the file size can't be the whole project because it was several mb in size and now it's 500kb. It would be cool if I could reconstruct it using a journal file from the day before it went awry.

Nothing to do with Revit damaging the file, it was an email disaster I think...but frankly don't know.

Addition: I took a wild guess and tried to rename the journal file, I believe represents the point in time before the recent unpleasantness, to project name.rvt. Attempted to open and a dialog box informed me it must be manually upgraded, contact your application support etc. So am I on the right track and now must get support to fixerup?

[Allen Lacy]

You can try to drag the journal file over the desktop icon. It might work, but I've been told by Revit CSA that the journals are not a reliable source. I have had some success recovering a file this way, but only if I had not saved during the session.

[sbrown]

Steve, I have recovered many lost hours of work with journals, you do just drag it on to the revit icon. and it will recreate every step you did that day. There are problems,

1. you need your existing file to be in the state it was when you opened revit that session, the journal file records every command since revit was openned, not just that job.

2. If you opened and worked on other files during the session they will be opened and modified.

so the bot. line is and you should check this out. if you just opened revit, opened your project and worked for a couple hours without saving more times than you have backups, you can use the journal. once you can't rename a backup to be the exact same name and point in time when the journal file started it won't work.

You can also edit the journal file if a specific command caused a crash, you can delete that out of the file before you run it.

[Steve_Stafford]

So if I understand:

I no longer have a version of the project that is "similar" to the last Journal file. So, I won't be able to "recover" the project with the journal because the project it will attempt to restore isn't a close enough version?

The project was truncated somehow in an email...I really don't know what happened, except to say...the project was 6mb and then it was .5mb.

I have dragged the journal file over the Revit app icon and it attempts to rebuild, then I get an error message that says...This file must be upgraded manually, contact your application support provider. I have a hard time believing my reseller can resolve that. But it sounds like it thinks it's a different version?

It would be great if I could recover or rebuild...