Can you somehow restore a deleted blueprint book?

[Neiro]

I'm 60 hours into a fresh game and a big worm killed me. When I loaded the autosave one of my blueprint books was gone - one that was in my personal blueprint library from previous games. I've tried loading all the other games I had that could still be loaded (version requirement) and none of them have a copy of that particular book in their inventory :(

Using vanilla game with no mods.

[Fel]

Not that I know at least.

For future reference, don't directly move blueprints/books to your inventory from the library, you can directly use them from the library (even link them to the hotbar) or right click them to make a copy instead.

[Neiro]

Yeah I didn't have it in my inventory, merely on my toolbelt - but I hadn't made an export of it, as I didn't know it could randomly be deleted

[Fel]

It's not randomly though, the usual issue is that people first transfer the blueprint/book to their inventory before putting it in the hotbar or using it, meaning removing it from the library, and if you load an earlier save you "erase" the one in the inventory but the library isn't tied to a save so it isn't reverted.

[Neiro]

Originally posted by Fel:

It's not randomly though, the usual issue is that people first transfer the blueprint/book to their inventory before putting it in the hotbar or using it, meaning removing it from the library, and if you load an earlier save you "erase" the one in the inventory but the library isn't tied to a save so it isn't reverted.

That is not what happened to me. I had at no point in the game moved the book to my inventory, and I was actually using it at the time of the autosave - or well I was running for my life, but while building a wall from the book. So unless the monsters can destroy the book with acid, it must've disappeared on its own somehow.

[Nailfoot]

Also, if you have it in the toolbelt, that is just a link.

If you want it off of the toolbelt, right click it. Do NOT open it and delete it, that deletes the original.

[Neiro]

Originally posted by Nailfoot:

Also, if you have it in the toolbelt, that is just a link.

If you want it off of the toolbelt, right click it. Do NOT open it and delete it, that deletes the original.

Yeah I'm aware. And just to reiterate - I didn't remove it - I merely loaded an autosave after dying, and it was no longer a thing.

[Neiro]

Update. Was at my parents place yesterday and fired up Factorio. Complained about old blueprint files - so I had a look and it contained some backup data from an old beta. When I got home today I looked into the folder of my own pc. Turns out there was a backup of the stuff I'd lost. When it updated to 1.0 last year it made a backup of the blueprint book.
The data's stored in %appdata%\factorio and called blueprint-storage-[something relevant].dat and the active book is called blueprint-storage.dat and is loaded when you load a savegame.

Now knowing it's possible for data to just poof out of existence I've made export strings of the two books I use most and saved them in a place I have backup. Just in case.

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by Neiro:

...
Now knowing it's possible for data to just poof out of existence I've made export strings of the two books I use most and saved them in a place I have backup. Just in case.

I have my Factorio blueprint folder automatically saved on my Google drive. You may want to consider that for the future.