title: Restore or access workspaces from MySQL Workbench
body: <p>Using MySQL Workbench 6.3.8 build 1228 CE (64-bit), on Windows 10 Pro, version 1803, build 17134.112.</p>
  
  <p>I want to restore my old workspaces in MySQL Workbench. If that is not possible, I will be happy with just being able to access them as text files.</p>
  
  <p>I guess my laptop had an unusual power-off or reset last night. Normally I put it in Sleep mode, but when I opened it this morning it had reset itself: all applications had quit.</p>
  
  <p>I re-opened Workbench, and got this error message:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/GURYM.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/GURYM.png" alt="this error message"></a></p>
  
  <p>saying that my workspaces could not be opened.</p>
  
  <p>I can't get the full text of the error message, so I don't know exactly where Workbench is looking, but using Windows Explorer I could navigate to:</p>
  
  <pre><code>C:\Users\JamesBarton\AppData\Roaming\MySQL\Workbench\sql_workspaces
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>which looks right to me, and contains <code>.workspace</code> and <code>.autosave</code> directories.</p>
  
  <p>I've backed up the <code>Workbench\</code> directory, and then tried just removing the <code>.autosave</code> directories, to force the use of the <code>.workspace</code> directories, but when I did that, Workbench still just opened one empty tab. The first <code>.workspace</code> directory contains 95 files, including 45 <code>.scratch</code> files totalling 107kb.</p>
  
  <p>Is it possible to check exactly where MySQL Workbench is looking for workspaces?</p>
  
  <p>Can I force it to open a workspace directly, or at least show me why it can't open a workspace? If that is not possible, can I somehow extract the SQL from the <code>.scratch</code> files? Thanks.</p>