“The document can’t be opened. This file is empty”

What happened? I opened this file which was almost finished this afternoon and now by night I tried to open it again and it says the file is empty? I can’t even open with empty boxes, is just doesn’t open at all. I restarted the computer and nothing changed. Also, the file on finder shows with Zero Bytes. Someone help me, this typeface is my next release and the oldest version before this has not lots of new things and instances.

Just a quick guess: Is the file in Dropbox as online-only? That could explain why the file is on the computer but with zero bytes. Making it available offline would help in that case.

Unfortunately no, it was fully on my Mac

Can you open the file with a Text editor?

I tried and that’s what shows

Then the file is empty. Is there an “(autosave)” file nearby? If not, you need a backup of the file. I have never seen this. Not sure why that would happen.

I see you used a date suffix in the file name. That is a good idea, You just need to duplicate the file more often. Or put it in version control.

I ran into this horrific error a few months back, I am still not entirely sure what exactly caused it, but I too lost tons of work. It most probably had something to do with a botched attempt of putting it in VCS (git). All files got shrunk to 0 bytes and were gone.

Is there anything you might have done with the file that could have affected this? Do you have it in VCS? If so, what client do you use?

I have all important files in git.

A important lesson font those events: always have a copy of your files.

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