LyX ⇒ Problem opening .lyx file

[DavidM]

Hi everyone,

I am using Lyx 1.6.7. I saved an important .lyx file on my memory stick, and I cannot open it in Lyx anymore. I get the following error information:

Code: Select all

Error returned from iconv
EINVAL An incomplete multibyte sequence has been encountered in the input.
When converting from UTF-8 to UCS-4LE.
Input: 0x61 0x64 0x62 0x64 0xcb
Error returned from iconv
EILSEQ An invalid multibyte sequence has been encountered in the input.
When converting from UTF-8 to UCS-4LE.
Input: 0xca 0x42 0x65 0x63 0x60 0x68 0x4f 0x6c
Completed

I can open the file in notepad and see my text. Now I could copy the text into a new lyx file and redo the many formulas. But given the amount of formulas in the document, I would like to open it in lyx.

This file is a child document in another document. The 'mother' file has the same error. Perhaps this has something to do with it.

Does anyone know how to recover the file?

Regards,
David

[meho_r]

For starters, make sure that you don't have and non-ascii characters in the path to the .lyx file (as well as in the name of the .lyx file itself). Characters like ê, à, č, đ etc. in the path often cause problems, and not only with LyX.

If this isn't the problem, try using LyX 1.6.8 to open the file.

[DavidM]

Thanks for your reply!

I found out the problem. Lyx made an error while writing the file away last time, and forgot to put

Code: Select all

\end_body
\end_document

at the end of the document, so LyX just kept on going. It also deleted some of my text. Luckily a .lyx~ file with the complete correct code was also in the folder, so I copied this code to the .lyx file and all is well now What is that .lyx~ anyway?

[meho_r]

.lyx~ is a backup file which is produced by default automatically every 5 minutes and when saving your file (Tools > Preference > User Interface > Documents). These files are invisible on Linux, but I'm not sure about Windows.

[DavidM]

Thanks! Wish I had known this before I despaired of recovering my document.

Yes, .lyx~ is visible in windows.