Understanding Workspaces in NinjaTrader: Why Your Charts Disappear
Many traders open NinjaTrader and suddenly realize that all their charts—or at least some of them—are missing. The immediate reaction is confusion: “Why did this happen?” But the answer is simple, and it’s important to understand that this usually happens because the user unknowingly caused it.
Here’s what you need to know:
Whenever you save a Workspace in NinjaTrader, you are saving exactly what is open and visible on your desktop at that moment. That includes all open charts, indicators, DOMs, and any other windows.
In 90% of the cases where charts disappear, the problem starts when a trader closes NinjaTrader at the end of the day. What typically happens is this:
The user begins by manually closing each chart window.
Once the last window is closed, NinjaTrader prompts with a question:
“Do you want to save the Workspace?”Out of habit, the user clicks Yes.
By clicking Yes at this point, the user is telling NinjaTrader to overwrite the Workspace with whatever is currently on the screen—which, at that moment, is nothing. All the charts were closed already. As a result, the previously saved Workspace (with all the charts and configurations) is now replaced with a blank one.
What You Should Do Instead
When NinjaTrader asks if you want to save the Workspace as you’re exiting, take a moment to look at what’s still open. If your charts are already closed, do not click Yes.
As a general rule, unless you’ve made intentional changes and want to keep them, always click No when exiting NinjaTrader.
Your Workspace does not need to be saved over and over again. Once it’s set up the way you want, that version will be preserved until you decide to make and save changes.
How to Restore a Workspace
If you’ve accidentally saved an empty Workspace, don’t panic. You may be able to restore a previous version by doing the following:
Go to the Tools menu.
Select Database Management.
From there, you’ll see an option to Restore Workspace.
This feature lets you recover earlier versions of your Workspace—just one more reason to avoid unnecessary saves, especially after closing your charts.