KNIME didnt save workflow and hours of my work! I hate this shitting tool!
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Hi @skleppi, Welcome to the KNIME Forum. You might be trying to save it the workflow while in execution or while the execution stuck and you have to end it through the task manager or may have got crashed.
You can always keep exporting your workflow at very major change stages.
The bast way is save the workflow flow after you make any changes and before running in some special cases (like before running SSH node, etc.)
Every tool has its feature you need to learn it. No matter which tool you are using.
I don’t know if it will help if you didn’t open the KNIME again. Enable your hidden folder view option and check in the folder where you have the workflow, did you have anything like same name with “.” in front. That is the latest change, but it automatically get deleted once you open the workflow again in KNIME. If you don’t find it or you open the workflow again. You cannot recover. (I see this doesn’t apply in the case of latest version in 5.2.5 it used to work).
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It’s not about me learning features of your tool. I’ve been using it for years. It’s about bugs in your ■■■■■■“modern” design.
@skleppi, I am trying to look for one solution, if it will work I will post it. I need 10-20 min. It might will be helpful for me as well. Let me test and if it won’t work even then i will let you know. Before your question I didn’t even think about trying this solution.
@skleppi , I tried, using Smart Save - Eclipse plug-in Marketpleace but it is also working on in Classic mode not in Modern UI. Yes it doesn’t detect the changes or loose the focus. I can say if that is one of the feature you like, then please switch to the classic.
I don’t think KNIME has any Auto-Save feature in modern UI, it is all about manual save options.
2 Likes
Hey @skleppi,
Sorry to hear that you made this experience. Could you give us some more details on what happened, so that we can find out why it didn’t save your changes. We are currently looking into how we can integrate an auto save mechanism to Modern UI to prevent situations like this. But I would still love to understand why it happened in a first place.
Greetings and thanks,
Daniel
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I have the same problem. there are no advise: when I open knime desktop after I “saved” my workflow the day before, many of the last changes are lost
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Hey @Mattia_Salvador,
sorry to hear that. Could one of you (or both) post their knime.log file. You can access it through the menu on the top right. This would help us a lot to get insights in how this could happen.
Greetings and thanks,
Daniel
Sorry to hear that you lost valuable work. We take issues like this very seriously and are actively investigating based on any information we get.
So, in addition to the knime.log leading up to the problem, I would be interested to know if the version of the two plugins
- KNIME Workbench
- KNIME Modern UI
match each other, e.g. are both 5.4.3 like in the screenshots:
On Windows you can reach “About KNIME” via Help → About… and on macOS via the menubar KNIME → About KNIME.
5 Likes
I am having an issue with the Save as well. I finished my work on a new workflow and saved with the icon in the upper left (diskette). When I went to close Knime, I selected Yes to save the workflow, then
knime.log (207.3 KB)
I got the following error:
log4j3.xml (5.2 KB)
Thanks!
Hi @dzsw6801,
the issue appears to be that the temporary folder where the workflow table data should be saved to locally has been deleted (as pointed out by @hmfa).
It seems to start at the point in time when the Excel Reader cannot write its temporary output table data:
2025-03-18 22:23:12,970 : ERROR : KNIME-BackgroundTableWriter-1 : : Buffer : Excel Reader : 3:16 : Writing of table to file at node Excel Reader 3:16 at workflow Sedona Housing 3 encountered error: IOException: Workflow temp directory C:\Users\Ed\AppData\Local\Temp\knime_Sedona Housing_11545 has been deleted.
java.io.IOException: Workflow temp directory C:\Users\Ed\AppData\Local\Temp\knime_Sedona Housing_11545 has been deleted.
at org.knime.core.data.container.Buffer$ASyncWriteCallable.call(Buffer.java:2968)
at org.knime.core.data.container.Buffer$ASyncWriteCallable.call(Buffer.java:1)
at java.base/java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(Unknown Source)
at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(Unknown Source)
at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)
at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
2025-03-18 22:23:12,971 : ERROR : KNIME-BackgroundTableWriter-1 : : Buffer : Excel Reader : 3:16 : Table will be held in memory until node is cleared.
2025-03-18 22:23:12,971 : ERROR : KNIME-BackgroundTableWriter-1 : : Buffer : Excel Reader : 3:16 : Workflow can't be saved in this state.
It could be that some other (Windows) process cleaned up temporary space in the meantime and deleted that workflow temp folder.
I tried to recreate your scenario by opening a workflow from Hub directly (which creates such a temp folder for tables to go into). I got a slightly different looking dialog, but maybe the steps to get a version of the workflow saved still help you.
Having a workflow with executed nodes, marked as “dirty” (i.e. having changes that need to be saved):
- I manually deleted the whole workflow temp folder, which contained some table data files, to trigger the problem. Normal save via the icon then fails.
- I reset all nodes to clear references to any temporary tables (that were in the temp folder). This is unfortunately necessary, but since the temp files are already deleted anyway, they cannot be recovered.
- I used “Save As” to save the changes under another workflow (locally), which worked.
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Hi all, stumbled on this thread due to a similar experience. Workflow I thought I’d saved apparently wasn’t, and I had recently ensured that the autosave option was checked in the classic user interface section of Preferences.
Curiously, I poked around the workspace folder and saw a “workflow.svg” file with a timestamp of when I thought I’d saved, and it’s an image of the workflow showing the updates! There are also a bunch of node folders in there with the same timestamp, so why aren’t those changes loading???
Not a ton of work I’d lose, but I am curious what’s happening here.
Figured I’d upload some screenshots and files assuming that may help.
- “KNIME UI Snip” is how the workflow loads when opening in the app.
- “workflow.svg” is the image file showing the changes I’d made when I saved
- “Workflow Files-Folders” is a snip of the workflow directory showing timestamps of when I’d saved.
Hi.
Unfortunately, this error when writing a workflow is a recurring issue.
I see many requests for help regarding KNIME not being able to save a workflow.
There should be a task force to fix this problem, identifying and correcting the root cause.
The KNIME team should implement a mechanism to systematically preserve the delta version.
It would be interesting to analyze the correlation between these types of errors and the presence of certain nodes on the workflow.
If their presence causes many errors, it is time to refactor it.
Br
Hugo
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Hi @amcloughlin,
this looks really odd! Can you post the nodes and connection elements of workflow.knime? I am curios why it has the correct timestamp, but the loaded workflow seems to contain the old state (e.g. the Excel Writer, which is not there in the svg anymore).
Can you attach the knime.log as well (it’s in workspace/.metadata/knime)? It contains helpful information for us to debug.
Also, which version are you using and is this a local workflow?
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Hi.
KNIME team should consider making it easier for KNIME to export all the information needed to record an incident on the user forum, via a single button.
There are too many steps to take to retrieve and send evidence such as user, logs, version, workflow, etc.
It happened again: last night I saved and closed, and this morning the latest changes were gone… here’s the log file.
knime.log (2.2 MB)
This is a local workflow, using version 5.4.3.v202503071316. Unsure if this may have anything to do with it, but I had just updated extensions and also used a new node I’d dragged in - Extract File Name from Path
Here is the KNIME log as well as the workflow.knime file (saved as .txt to enable upload)
workflow.knime.txt (37.1 KB)
. I’m unsure what you’re asking for to post “nodes and connections” here.
knime.log (3.5 MB)
Much appreciated!